Handbook of SAS DATA Step Programming

26 Handbook of SAS

®

DATA Step Programming

FIGURE 3.3

The second iteration of Program 3.1.

FIGURE 3.4

The third iteration of Program 3.1.

27Understanding How the DATA Step Works

that there are no more observations to read. When an end-of-le marker

is encountered, SAS goes to the next DATA or PROC step in the program.

(Program 3.1 is illustrated in program3.1.pdf.)

3.1.3 The Importance of the OUTPUT Statement

In Program 3.1, an explicit OUTPUT statement is used to tell SAS to write

the current observation from the PDV to a SAS data set immediately.

An OUTPUT statement is not actually needed in Program 3.1 because

thecontents ofthePDV are written ...