>You have already seen some good advice about the use of >SUBSTR versus IN: in the DATA step, but nobody seems to >have mentioned that the colon operator is not available >in SQL.

Ian,

I did mention it explicitly in my reply - but what makes me write at the moment is NOT "I did! I did! You failed to notice!". The thing is, I subsequently received a reply to this particular point from a very highly esteemed birdie both of us know well and learned that in fact, the latest version of SAS SQL does have the counterpart of the colon modifier. In the case of the equality, it would be the mneumonic EQT operator, with GET, LET, etc. corresponding to other operators. How recent that version of SAS might be, I am fuzzy about, for in 8.1 available to me on any machine, it does not work, instead getting smart on me and telling that I probably meant EQ isntead of EQT. But since I doubt that the birdie is pulling my leg, please try it in 8.2 and see what happens.

Kind regards, ===================== Paul M. Dorfman Jacksonville, FL =====================

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