You can specify a BY statement with PROC CATMOD to obtain separate analyses of groups determined by the BY variables. When a BY statement appears, the procedure expects the input data set to be sorted in order of the BY variables. The variables are one or more variables in the input data set.

If your input data set is not sorted in ascending order, use one of the following alternatives:

• Sort the data by using the SORT procedure with a similar BY statement.

• Specify the BY statement option NOTSORTED, or DESCENDING in the BY statement for the CATMOD procedure. The NOTSORTED option does not mean that the data are unsorted but rather that the data are arranged in groups (according to values of the BY variables) and that these groups are not necessarily in alphabetical or increasing numeric order.

• Create an index on the BY variables by using the DATASETS procedure (in Base SAS software).

For more information about the BY statement, see the discussion in SAS Language Reference: Concepts. For more information about the DATASETS procedure, see the discussion in the Base SAS Procedures Guide.

When you specify a BY statement with PROC CATMOD, no further interactive processing is possible. In other words, once the BY statement appears, all statements up to the associated RUN statement are executed for each BY group in the data set. After the RUN statement, no further statements are accepted by the procedure.