Hi there:

I'm hoping someone can give me an idea on the procedure to follow (not code, I need to learn!). I have an idea on what to do, but I think there must be a better way.

I have a dataset with observations, one of the variables has a 30 digit long number string for each observation.

The other dataset has no variable at all in common, and has 5000+ observations in the variable I am interested in.

What I need to do is for each observation in dataset 1, perform a pattern match (I was going to use the PRX stuff) based on the field in dataset 2.. if no match at all in the whole 5000 table, then move on to the next record in dataset 1, else a match.

Now, I'm not sure if it's possible in PRX to just say 'call other dataset and use that', if it is, then the task is simple.

Because the only way I can think of doing this right now is to do a proc transpose of dataset 2 to dataset 1, and then dataset 1 will be 5000+ columns wide, but I would be able to perform data-matching within that dataset as I suppose I could loop col1-col5000..

Except that seems like an ugly way to go about it.

Thanks for any ideas you might have.