Handbook of SAS DATA Step Programming

26 Handbook of SAS

®

DATA Step Programming

a data set by reading the variables ID, SMOKE, and AGE from the HEARING

data set. Using the KEEP= option after DAT1 in the DATA statement will

yield thesame result; however, specifying the KEEP= option in the SET state-

ment in this example is more efcient because SAS reads only the desired

variables.

Program 1.11:

data dat1;

set hearing(keep = id smoke age);

run;

The easiest way to verify whether the DAT1 data set was created cor-

rectly is to check your SAS log. Based on the SAS log from Program 1.11,

you cansee that DAT1 contains 34 observations and 3 variables. You can

also use PROC CONTENTS to examine the contents of the newly created

dataset.

Log from Program 1.11:

136 data dat1(keep = id smoke age); ...