Working with SAS Data Sets

Using the CREATE Statement with the FROM Option

You can create a SAS data set from a matrix by using the CREATE statement with the FROM option. This form of the CREATE statement is as follows:

CREATE SAS-data-set FROM matrix

           < [COLNAME=column-name ROWNAME=row-name] > ;

where

SAS-data-set

names the new data set.

matrix

names the matrix containing the data.

column-name

names the variables in the data set.

row-name

adds a variable containing row titles to the data set.

Suppose you want to create a SAS data set named RATIO containing a variable with the height-to-weight ratios for each student. You first create a matrix containing the ratios from the matrices HEIGHT and WEIGHT that you have already defined. Next, use the CREATE and APPEND statements to open a new SAS data set called RATIO and append the observations, naming the data set variable HTWT instead of COL1.

  
    htwt=height/weight; 
    create ratio from htwt[colname='htwt']; 
    append from htwt;
 

Now submit the SHOW DATASETS and SHOW CONTENTS statements:

  
    > show datasets; 
  
      LIBNAME MEMNAME   OPEN MODE   STATUS 
      ------- -------   ---------   ------ 
      WORK    .CLASS    Update 
      WORK    .RATIO    Update      Current Input    Current Output 
  
    > show contents; 
  
      VAR NAME   TYPE   SIZE 
      HTWT       NUM      8 
      Number of Variables:    1 
      Number of Observations: 18 
  
    > close ratio;
 

As you can see, the new SAS data set RATIO has been created. It has 18 observations and 1 variable (recall that you deleted 1 observation earlier).