Date:         Tue, 25 Jul 2006 06:37:12 -0400
Reply-To:     Arild S <sko@KLP.NO>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Arild S <sko@KLP.NO>
Subject:      Re: Select field of data set transposed

On Tue, 25 Jul 2006 02:20:59 -0700, antje.schuele@googlemail.com
<antje.schuele@GOOGLEMAIL.COM> wrote:

>Dear Newsgroup,
>
>I'd like you to ask for help for a problem I have been sitting since
>yesterday.
>
>The dataset I use is transposed so every row is the sequence of events
>of one person. Sometimes one row contains five events, others just 2 or
>others even 30.
>
>My aim is to select the FIRST event of every user that is different
>from these I have in a separate list.
>For example (columns are seperated here via "-"):
>person1: event - event - something - event
>person2: event - something1 - event - event - event -event - something2
>- event - event
>person3: event - event - event - event - event - event - event -
>something
>
>The "something" is what I want to select. For person2 it is
>"something1", not "something2", because I always need the first
>not-event.
>So I started to write my program like that:
>
>data test;
>        length sth $256;
>        set dataset;
>        array some col1-col30;
>        do cc = 1 to 30;
>          select;
>                when (some(cc) eq "event" AND sth = . )   sth = some(cc);
>                when (some(cc) eq " " AND sth = . )         sth = some(cc);
>                otherwise
sth = some(cc);
>          end;
>        end;
>        drop cc;
>run;
>
>Has anyone an idea how to filter out the "something"?
>
>Thanks a lot in advance.
>
>Antje

Hi, it could be a simple array solution.
You can identify "event" (here just E), so picking the first
non-E is:

data out (drop=i);
 input ID $ (var1-var10) ($);
 length sth $10;
 array choose [10] var1-var10;
 do i=1 to dim(choose);
  if choose(i) ne 'E' then do;
   sth = vname(choose(i)) || ' = ' || choose(i) ;
   leave;
  end;
 end;
cards;
1 E E E S1 E E E E E S2
2 E E E E E E S2 E E E
;
proc print;
run;

Is that the only reason you are transposing?
Don't forget " sort - set by - first.var/last.var ".

A