SAS® Certification Prep Guide: Base Programming for SAS®9

Chapter 6. Understanding DATA Step Processing

Overview	156
Introduction	156
Objectives	157
Writing Basic DATA Steps	157
How SAS Processes Programs	158
Compilation Phase	159
Input Buffer	159
Program Data Vector	160
Syntax Checking	160
Data Set Variables	160
Descriptor Portion of the SAS Data Set	161
Summary of the Compilation Phase	163
Execution Phase	164
Initializing Variables	165
Input Data	166
Input Pointer	166
End of the DATA Step	168
Iterations of the DATA Step	170
End-of-File Marker	172
Summary of the Execution Phase	174
End of the Execution Phase	175
Debugging a DATA Step	175
Diagnosing Errors in the Compilation Phase	175
Diagnosing Errors in the Execution Phase	176
Testing Your Programs	180
Writing a NULL Data Set	180
Limiting Observations	181
PUT Statement	181
Summary	184
Text Summary	184
Points ...