Date:         Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:41:24 -0600
Reply-To:     Mary <mlhoward@avalon.net>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Mary <mlhoward@AVALON.NET>
Subject:      Re: Numeric to Numeric Conversion
Comments: To: Bucher Scott <SBucher@schools.nyc.gov>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

But you aren't doing a binary search here- you are simply comparing numeric values- a binary search would be when you are searching
an array or data set variable such as using SQL.

Did you see the thread last week:
Performance: IF vs. Informat vs. Format?

IF statements did not necessarily perform slower, in fact, they were faster in some cases.

-Mary

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bucher Scott 
  To: Mary ; SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
  Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 4:33 PM
  Subject: RE: Re: Numeric to Numeric Conversion


  In my case this would results in hundreds of 'if-then' statements. Formatted lookups use a binary search, which would be much faster; and if I took the time to create a hash per Jack's suggestion, it would be still faster.

   

  -Scott

   

   

  From: Mary [mailto:mlhoward@avalon.net] 
  Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 5:27 PM
  To: Bucher Scott; SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
  Subject: Re: Re: Numeric to Numeric Conversion

   

  Scott,

   

  I really don't understand why using a logic statement is out of the question here.

   

  Why is it that this:

   

  if x >= 0 and x <=211 then

     x=40;

   

  Is such a difficult solution?   It does seem that if you have a lot of these, you could load

  up a dataset and generate the IF statements with the lower and the upper value and the 

  recoded value as variables.   

   

  -Mary

    ----- Original Message ----- 

    From: Bucher Scott 

    To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 

    Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 2:47 PM

    Subject: Re: Numeric to Numeric Conversion

     

    Thanks all,

    I tried the various suggestions but all seem to produce the same
    problem. Changing the variable type to 'I' or using VVALUE() both
    produce the notes. Others have suggested recoding the values using logic
    (e.g. if 0 <= x <= 211 then x = 40;) or using the proc format statement
    to hardcode the values, but the format contains hundreds of values,
    which why I used a control data statement.

    So at this point I agree with Howard: " In my opinion, there are some
    missing tools. PROC FORMAT should be able to create NNFORMATs, and there
    should be a NNPUT function. 'NN' means numeric-to-numeric." Where is the
    SAS Software Ballot? ;)

    -Scott