Basics of SAS Programming in 2 Hours

SAS is a powerful and flexible statistical package that runs on many platforms, including Windows and Unix. This class is designed for anyone interested in learning how to write basic SAS programs. Some familiarity with SAS is recommended. If you are new to SAS you may want to review our Introduction to SAS Seminar. It is expected that those attending this course have the ability to navigate to and access data files on their own operating system. The students in the class will have hands-on experience using SAS for data manipulation including the use of arithmetic operators, conditional processing, using SAS built-in functions, merging, appending, formatting, and different options for modifying SAS output. It is our hope that after this seminar you will be able to:

• Comfortably navigate the SAS window environment

• Subset and create new datasets

• Create new variables

• Write and debug basic SAS programs

• Use SAS function for basic data management tasks

• Merge and append data

• Modify SAS output for presentation

SAS Statements

• Statements can start anywhere and end anywhere. A semicolon at the end of the last line marks the end of the statement.

• Many SAS statements can be on the same line, with each statement ending with a semicolon.

• Space can be used to separate the components in a SAS program statement.

• SAS keywords are not case sensitive.

• Every SAS program must end with a RUN statement.

SAS Variable Names

Variables in SAS represent a column in the SAS data set. The variable names follow the below rules.

• It can be maximum 32 characters long.

• It can not include blanks.

• It must start with the letters A through Z (not case sensitive) or an underscore (_).

• Can include numbers but not as the first character.

• Variable names are case insensitive.

And, many more