The SAS Data Statement

Overview

The SAS Data Step is the foundation upon which SAS programming is built. The Data Statement is responsible for defining the variables used in your program, reading each data case and assigning values to the variables, creating new variables, merging two data sets for analysis, transforming values, formatting and labeling variables, and assignment of missing values. Without an understanding of how the DATA Statement works it is impossible to use SAS successfully. Below we will look at each of the above tasks in more detail.

Details of using the Data Statement

Data keyword.
Defining variables with the input keyword.
Reading cases using the infile, cards or set keyword.
Creating and transforming variables and missing data.
Variable and value labels
A Simple Example

Author - Jack Suess
Created - 1/15/96