Introduction to DATA Step Processing

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ATTRIBUTE statement: For information about how the ATTRIBUTE statement enables you to assign attributes to variables, see SAS Language Reference: Dictionary.
DBMS access: This documentation explains how to use SAS for reading files of raw data and SAS data sets and writing to SAS data sets. However, SAS documentation for SAS/ACCESS provides complete information about using SAS to read and write information stored in several types of database management system (DBMS) files.
Informats: For a discussion about informats that you use with dates, see Working with Dates in the SAS System.
Length of variables: For more information about how a variable's length affects the values you can store in the variable, see Working with Numeric Variables and Working with Character Variables.
LINESIZE= option: For information about how to use the LINESIZE= option in an INPUT statement to limit how much of each data line the INPUT statement reads, see SAS Language Reference: Dictionary.
MERGE, MODIFY, or UPDATE statements: In addition to the SET statement, you can read a SAS data set with the MERGE, MODIFY, or UPDATE statements. For more information, see Merging SAS Data Sets and Updating SAS Data Sets.
SET statement: For information about the SET statement, see Starting with SAS Data Sets.
USER= SAS system option: You can specify the USER= SAS system option to use one-level names to point to permanent SAS files. (If you specify USER=WORK, then SAS assumes that files referenced with one-level names refer to temporary work files.) See the SAS System Options section in SAS Language Reference: Dictionary for details.

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