Understanding DATA Step Processing

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Character variables: For information about expressions involving alphabetic and special characters as well as numbers, see Working with Character Variables.
DATA step: For general DATA step information, see Introduction to DATA Step Processing. Complete information about the DATA step can be found in the "DATA Step Concepts" section of SAS Language Reference: Concepts.
IF-THEN/ELSE statements: The IF-THEN/ELSE statements are discussed in Acting on Selected Observations.
LENGTH statement: Additional information about the LENGTH statement can be found in Working with Numeric Variables and Working with Character Variables. To show the effect of the LENGTH statement on variable storage using the DATASETS procedures, see Getting Information about Your SAS Data Sets.
Missing values: For more information about missing values, see the in Working with Numeric Variables and Working with Character Variables.
Numeric variables: Information about working with numeric variables and expressions can be found in Working with Numeric Variables.
SAS statements: For complete reference information about the IF-THEN/ELSE, LENGTH, DELETE, assignment, and comment statements, see SAS Language Reference: Dictionary.