Date:         Mon, 13 Dec 1999 00:07:24 +0000
Reply-To:     John Whittington <John.W@MEDISCIENCE.CO.UK>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         John Whittington <John.W@MEDISCIENCE.CO.UK>
Subject:      Re: RETAIN or NOT RETAIN ?
Comments: To: "Paul M. Dorfman" <sashole@EARTHLINK.NET>
In-Reply-To:  <199912121927.TAA12134@vicar.netnames.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 14:32 12/12/99 -0500, Paul M. Dorfman wrote:

>John,
>It seems to me that the way the problem is set, ID = . check is superfluous
>- Toben wanted to replace all non-first values in a BY-group with the first
>one regardless of what they are. Your code has its own value of leaving all
>non-first, non-missing IDs in the BY-group intact. Thus,

Paul, I can't really disagree with that - the code I produced was, as I
said, based on the data sample that Toben provided.  For that data (i.e. if
all non-first values are missing), either your code or mine will do the job
(without counting characters, I think mine involves fractionally less
typing!).  However, if some of the non-first values may be NON-missing, but
Toben still wants to replace them with the first value, then he'd need your
code, not mine.

Kind Regards,


John

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