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Programmers are always looking for ways to save time, especially during periods of crunch-time. One technique I've found useful during these periods is assigning variable labels and formats with all my SAS data sets. It's a fairly easy process, although it does require a little extra time to initially set-up. But the rewards of having assigned them generally outweigh any initial time and cost in their creation.

I like to think of it as part of the data preparation process - it's an approach that rewards over and over. Sunil Gupta of Gupta Programming offers these suggestions on using labels and formats:

"Labels and formats are stored with many of our important SAS data sets to minimize processing time. A reason for using this technique is that many popular procedures use stored formats and labels as they produce output, eliminating the need to assign them in each individual step. This provides added incentives and value for programmers and end-users, especially since reporting requirements are usually time critical."

The following example illustrates how a LABEL statement can be assigned to two variables in a data set:

data libref.patients ;
   infile  'raw-data-file'  missover ;
   input  @1 patname  $25.
           @30 age              3. ;
   label  patname = 'Patient Name'
             age         = 'Patient Age' ;
run ;

data libref.patients ;
   infile  'raw-data-file'  missover ;
   input @40 dob    mmddyy10.  ;
   format  dob  mmddyy10.  ;
run ;

data libref.patients ;
   infile  'raw-data-file'  missover ;
   input  @1 patname  $25.
           @30 age              3. ;
   label  patname = 'Patient Name'
             age         = 'Patient Age' ;
run ;


data libref.patients ;
   infile  'raw-data-file'  missover ;
   input @40 dob    mmddyy10.  ;
   format  dob  mmddyy10.  ;
run ;

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