SAS Day 11: COALESCEC
Problem:
We want to select the non-missing value among qs1 to qs5 as QSSTRESN.
Desired Output:
SAS Function Background:
COALESECEC: Return the first non-missing Character String among the input variables
Syntax: Coalescec(” “, “a ” )=a
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Solution:
qsorres= strip(coalescec(qsorres1,qsorres2,qsorres3,qsorres4,qsorres5));
Alternative Solution:
Using Array
array values {*} $200 QS1 QS2 QS3 QS4 QS5;
do i =1 to dim(values);
if values{i} ne "" then QSORRES=strip(values{i});
end;
Mini Trick:
Coalesce return the first non-empty numeric values.
coalesce(.,1,2)=1
Note:
Coalesce does NOT work in Proc SQL sometimes, because SQL assigns a value to the variable even there is no count.
This Code will NOT work: select coalesce(count,0) as count.
Happy SAS Coding !🤪