Let’s start with a quiz. Which of the following is the Programmer’s Rule # 1?
1. Expert knowledge of multiple languages, like SAS and Java
2. Talent to maneuver with complex algorithms
3. Innate ability to draw flowcharts
4. None of the abov…
Strip Non-Printable ASCII Characters (SAS)
Say in your SAS data set, which comes from a text file, XML, or database, has non-ASCII characters that look like garbage—perhaps an odd square. These are probably control characters that mean something to some system, but they may be useless to …
NOTE: Yet more EG Custom Tasks
In the past I’ve bemoaned the lack of (free) third-party Enterprise Guide custom tasks (add-ins). Nothing much has changed in that respect, but SAS’s Chris Hemedinger recently released another. On this occasion it’s for shrinking character variables to…
World Statistics in Real Time
As SAS practitioners we deal with numbers every day, right? And, in the business intelligence systems that we help to build, we capture what’s going-on within our company plus what’s going-on outside with customers, competitors, and the world around us…
Data Step Hooks
Here is something to keep in mind when using the END= option on the set statement: There is no guarantee you will hit the end of file.Simple example to illustrate:data test; do i = 1 to 10; output; end;run;data _null_; set test(where=(i > 10)…
Example 8.32: The HistData package, sunflower plots, and getting data from R into SAS
This entry is mainly a promotion of the fascinating HistData R package. The package, compiled by the psychologist, statistician, and graphics innovator Michael Friendly, contains a number of small data sets of historical interest. These include data …