Hi, I have about 30 variables with responses of varying length, all character. For example, one person's value may be A while another's could be AFEG - up to 8 characters long. They are basically compilations of a number of conditions that a person reported, so can be any combination of about 15 different options. I am looking to write a program that will take each of these main variables, create the 15 new variables that will indicate presence/absence of that symptom, have SAS scan through to see if that particular character is within the response, and output the 1 or 0. At this point I am destringing each variable and then recoding, but it is taking me a long time and there is most certainly a more efficient and succinct way to do this. Can anyone help?

Thank you all so much, Alison