A global setting for "make all string comparisons and searches case-insensitive" would certainly be helpful, wouldn't it?

-- JackHamilton@FirstHealth.com Development Manager, Technical Group METRICS Department, First Health West Sacramento, California USA

>>> "Earl Westerlund" <earl.westerlund@KODAK.COM> 11/15/2000 12:43 PM >>> On 14 Nov 00 18:05:19 GMT, KennethMoody@FIRSTHEALTH.COM (Kenneth Moody) wrote:

>Bernard, > >I guess it depends on where you look in the documentation. > >In the HTML version of the online doc, under the heading Rules for SAS Variable Names, it says: > >A variable name may contain mixed case. The mixed case is remembered and used > for presentation purposes only. (SAS stores the case used in the first reference to a > variable.) When SAS processes variable names, however, it internally uppercases ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > them. You cannot, therefore, use the same letters with different combinations of > lower- and uppercase to represent different variables. For example, cat, Cat, and > CAT all represent the same variable. > >In contrast, with validvarname-upcase the variable name will always be upper case for presentation.

However, using validvarname=V6 will not make everything look just like Version 6. For example, in the OUTPARM= data set from PROC GLMMOD, the value of EFFNAME for the intercept term has been renamed from 'INTERCEPT' to 'Intercept'. We got caught in a program where we transpose that data set and look for 'INTERCEPT'.

It's a simple fix, but you have to make it. VALIDVARNAME= has no effect.