ACCESS Procedure Reference

ASSIGN Statement

Indicates whether SAS variable names and formats are automatically generated.

Optional statement
Applies to:	access descriptor
Interacts with:	CONTENT, FORMAT, INFORMAT, KEY, MVF, RENAME, RESET
Default:	NO

Syntax
Details

Syntax

ASSIGN<=>YES | NO | Y | N;

Details

The ASSIGN statement indicates whether SAS variable names are automatically generated and whether users can change SAS variable names and other column information the view descriptors created from this access descriptor.

An editing statement, such as ASSIGN, must be specified after the CREATE and database-description statements when you create an access descriptor. See CREATE Statement for more information.

The value NO (or N ) enables you to modify SAS variable names, formats, informats, database contents, occurrence ranges, and BY keys when you create an access descriptor and when you create view descriptors that are based on this access descriptor.

Specify a YES (or Y ) value for this statement to generate unique SAS variable names from the first eight characters of the DBMS column names, according to the rules listed below. With YES , you can change the SAS variable names and other column information only in the access descriptor. The SAS variable names and other column information that are saved in an access descriptor are always used when view descriptors are created from the access descriptor; you cannot change them in the view descriptors.

Default SAS variable names are generated according to these rules:

If the column name is longer than eight characters, SAS uses only the first eight characters. If truncating results in duplicate names, numbers are appended to the ends of the names. For example, the DBMS names clientsname and clientsnumber become the SAS names clientsn and clients1 .

If the same descriptor has another set of columns with duplicate names, the numeric suffix begins at the next highest number from the previous set of duplicate names. For example, if the descriptor has the duplicate names above and also has the DBMS names customername , customernumber , and customernode , the default SAS names would be customer , custome1 , and custome2 .
If the column name contains characters that are not valid in SAS names (including national characters), SAS replaces these characters with underscores (_). For example, the column name func$ becomes the SAS variable name func_ .

If you specify YES for this statement, SAS automatically resolves any duplicate variable names. However, if you specify YES , you cannot specify the CONTENT, FORMAT, INFORMAT, KEY, MVF (with OCCURS option), RENAME, or RESET statements when you create view descriptors that are based on the access descriptor.

When the SAS/ACCESS interface encounters the next CREATE statement to create an access descriptor, the ASSIGN statement is reset to the default NO value.

AN is the alias for the ASSIGN statement.

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