On Wed, 9 Oct 1996, Don Stanley <don_stanley@IBM.NET> wrote:

>Its a well accepted and clearly defined and taught axiom of computer >programming in virtually any language that IF an ELSE is available THEN >you use it. I find that the syntax without an else is confusing, and its >impact on efficiency can be enormous .... >I've always been of the opinion that omitting the else is similar to >using goto's. There are ALMOST always good reasons for not doing it.

I agree, within the context which you presumably (silently!) implied, but there are obviously plenty of situations in which a DATA step will have multiple IF statements with conditions which are *not* mutually exclusive, so that use of an ELSE (or SELECT) is just plain wrong.

Regards,

John

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