... >Part I: SAS Language General Item No. 6: >"add a new data set option which would allow a variable label to be >renamed"

hi, I like and dislike the concept of dataset options. I like them, because it is quick and convenient(I did not say 'dirty'!); I don't like them, because it can be complicated. For example, suppose that relabel option is added to the dataset option, this will get abused for sure:

data two(relabel=(age="age in years")); set one(where=(missing(age2)) keep=age relabel=(age="age at the latest birthday")) rename=(age=age2) ); rename age2=age; run;

The point being that doing a programming using options is not a good idea, especially when the order of execution is fixed: It is based on the lexical order of the option names for goodness sake!

On the other hand, making the variable label as an independent entity is an interesting idea. It will be in parallel to having the value labels (formats in sas) being independnet entities. We can associate a var label to a variable as we associate a value label(format) to a variable.

One of the immediate applications of this idea is to have multi-language variable labels. Say, we can have a variable label v1en in English and v1es in Spanish. Sometimes we may want to associate v1 with v1en (for English readers) and v1 with v1es (for Spanish readers)!

Of course, another way of solving the multi-language label problem (at least in the US) seems to legislate English as an official language... but this is way OT for this list. :-)

Sincerely, Chang