I did not intend to besmirch the good name of the COUNTW function.

I meant the use of COUNTW wasn't reliable for the example, because some of the distinct values -- in this case -- contain multiple words.

Chris

-----Original Message----- From: Quentin McMullen [mailto:qmcmullen.sas@GMAIL.COM] Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2012 3:21 PM To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU; Chris Hemedinger Subject: Re: one pdf report is missing

On Wed, 30 May 2012 17:56:13 +0000, Chris Hemedinger <Chris.Hemedinger@SAS.COM> wrote in part:

>The COUNTW approach of counting the distinct values might not be reliable. >

Hi All,

Can someone elaborate on when COUNTW may not be reliable?

Chris's comment reminded me of reading on Roland's site a while back, the statement that "This macro was updated at some time to use the countw() function but it was found that in rare circumstances it could return a zero value in a form such as 1.4567E-147 which although equal to zero from a numeric accuracy point of view, is not equal to the actual “0” expected...." http://www.datasavantconsulting.com/roland/sas_macro_design.html

But it's not clear to me which settings could lead a COUNTW approach to be unreliable.

Thanks, --Q.