Date:         Fri, 29 Oct 1999 16:58:58 +0100
Reply-To:     mr ro ashmore <rob@ESKYROB.NDO.CO.UK>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         mr ro ashmore <rob@ESKYROB.NDO.CO.UK>
Subject:      SCL list manipulation (copylist?)
Comments: To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

I have an external file which looks similar to this:
a
a
b
c
a
c

etc.

what i want to do is create an scl list (resultL) which, given the above
file,
looks like this:

RESULTL ( A= (1  2  5)  B=(3)   C=(4  6) )

the numbers represent which record numbers the letter was found.

At the outset, it seems a pretty straightforward task:
 - read in the record using FREAD function.
 - create a list (recordL) containing the record number using INSERTN
 - creat scl variable LETTER which is the value of the line eg A or B or C
 - create resultL list with recordL as the nameditem .
 - cycle through each record, adding to the named item list for that LETTER

But we hit problems when the first  'letter change' is encountered, in this
example record 3 where LETTER changes from a to b. If we clear the list
using
CLEARLIST the list identified by 'A=' is cleared also. If we dont, the
values 1, 2 are
still in the list.  It looks like it is necessary to use COPYLIST
recursively somehow.

It may be simpler to read through the file a number of times but nowhere
near as tidy!

any ideas??

TIA  rob.