Date:         Sun, 4 Oct 2009 14:34:57 -0500
Reply-To:     Joe Matise <snoopy369@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Joe Matise <snoopy369@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Dynamic column ordering
Comments: To: dave crimkey <d_crimkey@yahoo.com>
In-Reply-To:  <745675.79445.qm@web112502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

They'll be called _200701, _200702, etc., perhaps unless you have
validvarnames=any, and perhaps even then.  Normally a number starting a
variable name is disallowed.

If you then do a proc contents of the resulting dataset and put it out to a
dataset (keep NAME), and then run
proc sql;
select name into :namelist separated by ' ' from contents_dataset order by
name;
quit;
[not at SAS and don't recall if it is NAME or _NAME_, but I think it is
NAME]

data new;
retain &namelist;
set old;
run;

With the caveat that you need to both exclude your by variables from the
PROC SQL select, and add them at the front of the RETAIN statement before
the &namelist macro var.

-Joe

On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 2:28 PM, dave crimkey <d_crimkey@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I seem to have two problems.  One is that even though Transpose creates
> columns 2007 200701 etc., nothing else seems to recognize those column
> names..  Here's my transpose -- the values 2007, 200701 etc., are contained
> in variable secondvar.  I want them ordered in month order so 2007, 200701 -
> 200712, 2008, 200801-200812, 2009, 200901-200912.
>
> proc transpose data=sime out=all ;
>        byfirstvar thirdvar fourthvar fifthvar;
>        idsecondvar;
> run;
> procsortdata=all (drop = _LABEL_);
>        byfirstvar thirdvar fourthvar fifthvar;
> run;
>
> I've heard that I can use dictionary.columns to dynamically order the
> columns the way I want but am not sure how to use that.
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Arthur Tabachneck <art297@NETSCAPE.NET>
> To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Sent: Sunday, October 4, 2009 2:52:06 PM
> Subject: Re: Dynamic column ordering
>
> Dave,
>
> Please provide the list with some sample data, as well as your proc
> transpose
> and how you actually want the columns ordered.
>
> Art
> -----
> On Sun, 4 Oct 2009 11:15:23 -0700, dave crimkey <d_crimkey@YAHOO.COM>
> wrote:
>
> >I've created a report that results from a transpose of year/month.  Since
> the
> columns look like the following:  200701 200702.....200909 they are not
> coming
> out in the correct order.  I don't want to hard-code a retain statement in
> because I don't want to have to update the statement every month.  What is
> a
> good way of correctly ording the columns?
> >
> >Thanks,
> >Dave
>