The ARRAY statement is similar to, but not the same as, the ARRAY statement in the SAS DATA step. The ARRAY statement is used to associate a name (of no more than eight characters) with a list of variables and constants. The array name is used with subscripts in the program to refer to the array elements. The following code illustrates this:

   array r[8] r1-r8;

   do i = 1 to 8;
      r[i] = 0;
      end;

The ARRAY statement does not support all the features of the DATA step ARRAY statement. It cannot be used to give initial values to array elements. Implicit indexing of variables cannot be used; all array references must have explicit subscript expressions. Only exact array dimensions are allowed; lower-bound specifications are not supported and a maximum of six dimensions is allowed.

On the other hand, the ARRAY statement does allow both variables and constants to be used as array elements. (Constant array elements cannot have values assigned to them.) Both dimension specification and the list of elements are optional, but at least one must be given. When the list of elements is not given or fewer elements than the size of the array are listed, array variables are created by suffixing element numbers to the array name to complete the element list.