Date:         Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:41:52 -0400
Reply-To:     Gerhard Hellriegel <gerhard.hellriegel@T-ONLINE.DE>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Gerhard Hellriegel <gerhard.hellriegel@T-ONLINE.DE>
Subject:      Re: SELECT vs. IF/THEN ELSE

I'd say, in none of them. C and D are typical answers for something which
has to do with subsetting data. To be true, I even don't know the
difference of randomly and uniformly, that's nearly the same for me. Might
have a reason in my bad english knowledge.
However, IF-THEN-ELSE and SELECT are branch statements. IF-THEN-ELSE is a
branch wich goes in exactly two directions, select can have more than 2
directions. select is realized in 2 forms in SAS which are different. One
of them is a kind of CASE-construct. It has 2 branches like IF-ELSE, but
one of them contains a list of constants which are all compared with "="
with one single variable. One of the conditions is true and the others are
not tested any more. If all are false the other (else) branche is choosen.
Another form is, you can use different conditions with different variables
(a list of conditions instead a list of constants). All of that conditions
are tested. (A kind of OR)
With IF, all the conditions must be combined with logical operators "and,
or, not" or you have to build nested constructs. That is sometimes hard to
read and hard to find errors in. So SELECT might help to make it more
readable.
Both constructs don't have much to do with the dataset and randomly or not
randomly distributed values. Every obs is pumped through that statements,
no matter were the values are. The only thing of less or more efficiency
might be the so called "short circuit evaluation". If you have a logical
expression with some combined conditions, it might be good to put the
least probable condition in a AND-chain at the beginning. If the first
cond. is false, the others must not be tested... A optimizer cannot know
what data will come, but you might have a idea.

Gerhard



On Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:20:07 -0400, help ly <help.ly2005@GMAIL.COM> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>There is a SAS base question that I am not sure of the answer is C or D.
I
>prefer the answer of D.  Anyone has any opinion on this?
>
>
>1. In which situation, SELECT is more efficient than IF/THEN ELSE?
>
>
>C. In the large amount selected data which is randomly distributed for
>character variables.
>D. In the large amount selected data which is uniformly distributed for
>character variables.
>
>
>--
>Thanks so much!
>
>Orange
>help.ly2005@gmail.com