SAS Certification Prep Guide, 4th Edition

Appending SAS Data Sets

Overview

Now that you have seen several methods for concatenating raw data files, use the APPEND procedure to concatenate two SAS data sets.

General form, PROC APPEND: PROC APPEND BASE=SAS-data-set DATA=SAS-data-set; RUN; Here is an explanation of the syntax: BASE=SAS-data-set names the data set to which you want to add observations. DATA=SAS-data-set names the SAS data set containing observations that you want to append to the end of the BASE= data set.

PROC APPEND reads only the data in the DATA= SAS data set, not the BASE= SAS data set. Therefore, this action is very efficient. PROC APPEND concatenates data sets even though there might be variables in the BASE= data set that do not exist in the ...