Use array variables in subsetting IF without specifying number of array variables

Question

In SAS, I have a few columns of dollar values and several other columns. I don't care about a row of data if it has 0 values for all dollar values and I don't want these rows in the final data. The columns that are dollar values are already in an array Fix_Missing. I am in the data step.

So, for example, I could do:

IF Fix_Missing{1} NE 0 OR Fix_Missing{2} NE 0 OR Fix_Missing{3} NE 0;

However, the number of variables in the array may change and I want code that works no matter how many variables are in it. Is there an easy way to do this?

Answer 1

In most functions that accept uncounted lists of variables, you can use of array[*].

if sum(of fix_missing[*]) > 0

for example would work assuming fix_missing cannot have negative values. You can also use this with CATS, so for example:

if cats(of fix_missing[*]) ne '000';

would work, and you could do something even like this:

if cats(of fix_missing[*]) ne repeat('0',dim(fix_missing)-1);

if you might have unknown numbers of array elements (repeat takes a character and repeats it n+1 times).

Another useful function, probably not useful here but in the same vein, is whichn and whichc (numeric/character versions of same thing). If you wanted to know if ANY of them had a 0 in them:

if whichn(0,of fix_missing[*]) > 0;

which returns the position of the first zero it finds.