At 02:19 29/06/01 +0000, Bruce Erlichman wrote (in part):

> Still, I'll venture to say that maybe 1 out of every 2 or 3 >postings have questions of such a rudimentary nature that >a quick look-up on the on-line help, the hard copy manuals >or a quick call to SI has to be preferred over waiting for a response >via the newsgroup.

Elementary questions posted on SAS-L seem often (usually?) to elicit responses within minutes - and don't forget that many of the responses to such questions will probably be sent privately, not to the list.

However, I agree that 'a quick call to SI' is an alternative.

On-line Help and manuals are a different matter. The classic problem, which I'm sure we have all experienced, is that it can be extrordinarily difficult (impossible at times) to look up the answer to a very simple question unless/until one actually knows the answer! This arises with simple questions of the form 'is there a function/statement/procedure to do X'. Even with excellent indexing, trying to answer such a question by looking up 'X' is very often unfruitful.

Kind Regards,

John

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