The OUTCONT= data set contains descriptive information for the time series variables. This descriptive information includes various attributes of the time series variables. The OUTCONT= data set contains the following variables:

• NAME, a character variable that contains the series name

• KEPT, a numeric variable that indicates whether the series was selected for output by the DROP or KEEP statements. KEPT is usually the same as SELECTED, but can differ if a WHERE statement is used.

• SELECTED, a numeric variable that indicates whether the series is selected for output to the OUT= data set. The series is included in the OUT= data set (SELECTED=1) if it is kept (KEPT=1) and it has data for at least one selected BY group.

• TYPE, a numeric variable that indicates the type of the time series variable. TYPE=1 for numeric series; TYPE=2 for character series.

• LENGTH, a numeric variable that gives the number of bytes allocated for the series variable in the OUT= data set

• VARNUM, a numeric variable that gives the variable number of the series in the OUT= data set. If the series variable is not selected for output (SELECTED=0), then VARNUM has a missing value. Likewise, if no OUT= option is given, VARNUM has all missing values.

• LABEL, a character variable that contains the label of the series variable. LABEL contains only the first 256 characters of the labels. If they are longer than 256 characters, then the variable, DESCRIPT, is defined to hold the whole length of series labels. Note that if a data file assigns different labels to the same series variable within different cross sections, only the first occurrence of labels will be transferred to the LABEL column.

• the variables FORMAT, FORMATL, and FORMATD, which give the format name, length, and number of format decimals, respectively

• the GENERIC variables, whose values may vary from one series to another, but whose values remain constant across BY groups for the same series

By default, the OUTCONT= data set contains observations for only the selected series where SELECTED=1. If the OUTSELECT=OFF option is specified, the OUTCONT= data set contains one observation for each unique series of the specified periodicity contained in the input data file.

If you do not know what series are in the data file, you can run PROC DATASOURCE with the OUTCONT= option and OUTSELECT=OFF. The information contained in the OUTCONT= data set can then help you to determine which time series data you want to extract.