
92 Handbook of SAS
®
DATA Step Programming
the array reference. Syntax errors in the ARRAY statement will be detected
during the compilation phase.
The rst two iterations of the DATA step execution are illustrated in
Figures6.3 and 6.4.
6.2 Functions and Operators Related to Array Processing
6.2.1 The DIM, HBOUND, and LBOUND Functions
Sometimes you won’t know the dimension of an array. This tends to be
the case when you use _NUMERIC_, _CHARACTER_, and _ALL_ as
array-elements. A handy work-around is the DIM function, which supplies
the actual dimension to the DATA step. Closely related to the DIM function
are the HBOUND and LBOUND functions th ...