> From: Kevin F. Spratt [mailto:kevin-spratt@UIOWA.EDU] > I just received an SPSS portable file and have used the > convert procedure to create a SAS data set. I am > using SAS 8.1 under WinNT. > > My question is how I can create an output data set with > all of the variable names in one column so that I can > send this back to the student so that they can write in > appropriate variable name labels and, based on the frequency > table I send, assign formats for each variable. > > For example: in a two variable data set: > variable, label=, , format:, > id , label=,subject id , format:,. > sex , label=,subject gender , format:,0=Male, 1=Female > > If there is a better way, I would be glad to hear it.

you can start with proc CONTENTS

either take the output text and work with that or create a data set from CONTENTS and run it thru either PRINT or report writer

proc CONTENTS data = LIBRARY.WHATEVER out = CONTENTS (keep = Name Format Label Length );

you will want to specify whether a variable is character or numeric and its appropriate length. in your above example, sex may be numeric, and its default length would be 8 bytes since this is clearly a binary-valued variable and could be stored as an integer you could store it in at most 4 bytes and depending on your system either as few as 2 or 3.

you want real space savings: use character 1.

and by the way: zero is Female, one is Male gotta keep the Yin and Yang straight even in the data world ;-)

Ron Fehd the Yin&Yang maven CDC Atlanta GA USA RJF2@cdc.gov OpSys: WinNT Ver: 8.1 ---> cheerful provider of UNTESTED SAS code!*! <--- e-mail your SAS improvements to: suggest@sas.com archives: http://www.listserv.uga.edu/archives/sas-l.html If you always try to be logical, you probably won't ever have much sorrow, or much fun. -- Ashleigh Brilliant pot-shot #4438