SAS Certification Prep Guide, 5th Edition

Renaming Variables

The Basics of Renaming Variables

DATA step match-merging overwrites values of the like-named variable in the first data set in which it appears with values of the like-named variable in subsequent data sets.

Consider Cert.Demog, which contains the variable Date (date of birth), and Cert.Visit, which also contains Date (date of the clinic visit in 2009). The DATA step below overwrites the date of birth with the date of the clinic visit.

data work.merged; 
  merge cert.demog cert.visit; 
  by id; 
run; 
proc print data=work.merged; 
run;

The following output shows the effects of overwriting the values of a variable in the Work.Merged data set. In most observations, the date is now the date of the clinic visit. In observation 11, ...