VALIDVARNAME= System Option

Controls the type of SAS variable names that can be used or created during a SAS session.

Valid in:	configuration file, SAS invocation, OPTIONS statement, SAS System Options window
Category:	Files: SAS files
Default:	V7
See:	Introduction to SAS/ACCESS Naming

Syntax

Example

Syntax

VALIDVARNAME=V7 | UPCASE | ANY

Required Arguments

VALIDVARNAME=V7

indicates that a DBMS column name is changed to a valid SAS name, following these rules. This is the default value for SAS 7 and later.

Up to 32 mixed-case alphanumeric characters are allowed.
Names must begin with an alphabetic character or an underscore.
Invalid characters are changed to underscores.
Any column name that is not unique when it is normalized is made unique by appending a counter (0,1,2,…) to the name.

VALIDVARNAME=UPCASE: indicates that a DBMS column name is changed to a valid SAS name as described in VALIDVARNAME=V7 except that variable names are in uppercase.

VALIDVARNAME=ANY: allows any characters in DBMS column names to appear as valid characters in SAS variable names. Symbols, such as the equal sign (=) and the asterisk (*), must be contained in a 'variable-name'n construct. You must use ANY whenever you want to read DBMS column names that do not follow the SAS naming conventions.

Example

This example shows how the SQL pass-through facility works with VALIDVARNAME=V6.

options validvarname=v7;
proc sql;
   connect to oracle (user=testuser pass=testpass);
   create view myview as
     select amount_b, amount_s
       from connection to oracle
         (select "Amount Budgeted$", "Amount Spent$"
            from mytable);
quit;
proc contents data=myview;
run;

Output from this example would show that "Amount Budgeted$" becomes AMOUNT_B and "Amount Spent$" becomes AMOUNT_S.