| This post was kindly contributed by Key Happenings at support.sas.com - go there to comment and to read the full post. |
William Benjamin Jr. (Bill after you get to know him) is a SAS author and longtime SAS user. His was another title that I felt SAS users would really want to hear about. Benjamin presented Leave Your Bad Code Behind: 50 Ways to Make Your SAS Code Execute More Efficiently. If you went to his session on Monday, you were happy to see that Benjamin delivered what his title promised – 50 tips for more efficient execution of your code.
My original intention was to give you a shortened, appetite-whetting list of some of his most interesting tips. But Benjamin’s tips were code. He displayed the hard way or the least efficient way side-by-side with a more efficient way – usually one that accomplished more work in fewer lines of code! I took notes. I took a photo of his slides. And then I began to worry that I’d walk away empty-handed. Finally, I had the idea of asking Benjamin for one tip to include in this post – something you could use right away while waiting for the paper to post online. Benjamin was happy to give readers Tip 44.
Notice all of the work that is getting done in this code. According to Benjamin, you could replace Drop for Keep and include other data set options as well.
Benjamin also presented Yes! SAS® ExcelXP WILL NOT Create a Microsoft Excel® Graph; But SAS Users Can Command Microsoft Excel® to Automatically Create Graphs From SAS® ExcelXP Output. In that paper he shows SAS users how to create data using SAS, then command Excel to read the data and create graphs or fully formatted worksheets – and your output won’t include those troublesome embedded macros.
Both papers will be available on the SESUG site soon after the conference has ended so keep checking. If you are interested in more information on Benjamin’s Excel discussion, look for his SAS book to release later this year. According to Benjamin, he will be talking about transferring data between SAS and Excel and the topics will range from CVS to VBA.
It’s not too early to begin making your plans for next year’s SESUG in Alexandria, VA. Subscribe to the SESUG mailing list to ensure you get all of the information. I hope to see you there!
| This post was kindly contributed by Key Happenings at support.sas.com - go there to comment and to read the full post. |