Ed Indeed Ed the user was not well drilled to SAS and logic of programming.

the sas options in action were options dkrocond=nowarning nofmterr mergenoby=error msglevel=i mprint notes; and the code accepted.

The old rule circulating here in France in the years 80 was "Attention Sas fait toujours quelque chose, mais est-ce exact et correct?"

Sas is producing always some results but is it correct?

Andre

Ed Heaton a écrit : > Makes perfect sense to me. Of course I speak SAS. If I didn't, it would be confusing as h$#@!. > > For those observations where sex holds "M" we run the following conditional test. > > ( 10 and ( sex eq "2" ) ) > > Now, 10 is always true, but sex never holds "2" when it holds "M", so the result is false and false is zero. So, zero gets assigned to age. > > If SAS was more like modern, advances languages, they would not allow the same symbol to request an assignment and to request a test for equality. E.g., FORTRAN used = for an assignment and eq for equality testing. C and Java use == for equality testing and = for assignments. Pascal used = for equality testing and := for assignments. > > If SAS followed such rules, the submitted code would have produced an error and the user would have been protected. I would like to see a system option to allow the user to enforce such a rule. E.g.: > > If sex eq "M" then age = 10 and sex eq "2" ; > > would be allowed but > > If sex="M" then age=10 and sex="2" ; > > would generate a syntax error. > > Ed > > Edward Heaton, Senior Systems Analyst, > Westat (An Employee-Owned Research Corporation), > 1650 Research Boulevard, TB-286, Rockville, MD 20850-3195 > Voice: (301) 610-4818 Fax: (301) 294-2085 > mailto:EdHeaton@Westat.com http://www.Westat.com > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Andre Wielki > Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2008 6:10 AM > To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU > Subject: If then : evidence ! > > > A user here was writing Sas code analogous to this one > data cl; > set sashelp.class; > if sex="M" then age=10 and sex="2"; /*else...;...; */ > run; > > As the log was > > 203 data cl; > 204 set sashelp.class; > 205 if sex="M" then age=10 and sex="2"; > 206 run; > > NOTE: There were 19 observations read from the data set SASHELP.CLASS. > NOTE: The data set WORK.CL has 19 observations and 5 variables. > NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time): > real time 0.00 seconds > cpu time 0.00 seconds > > > He was going further!!!!!!!!!! > > I hope everybody reading this is aware of the results! > If not submit, quick look at the results. > > > > Andre > > -- > André WIELKI > INED (Institut National d'Etudes Démographiques) > Service Informatique > 133 Boulevard Davout 75980 Paris Cedex 20 > mél : wielki@ined.fr tél : 33 (0) 1 56 06 21 54 > >

-- André WIELKI INED (Institut National d'Etudes Démographiques) Service Informatique 133 Boulevard Davout 75980 Paris Cedex 20 mél : wielki@ined.fr tél : 33 (0) 1 56 06 21 54