The DROP statement drops the specified column from an access descriptor. The column cannot be selected for a view descriptor that is based on the access descriptor. However, the specified column in the PC file remains unaffected by this statement.

You can specify the DROP statement only when you create or update an access descriptor or when you update a view descriptor. DROP is not allowed when you create a view descriptor. When you use the UPDATE statement, you can specify DROP to remove a column from the view descriptor. However, the specified column in the PC file remains unaffected by the DROP statement.

An editing statement, such as DROP, must follow the CREATE and database-description statements when you create an access descriptor.

See "Create Statement" for additional information.

The column-identifier argument can be the column name or the positional equivalent from the LIST statement. This is the number that represents column placement in the access descriptor or view descriptor. To drop the third and fifth columns, submit this statement:

DROP 3 5;

If the column name contains lowercase characters, special characters, or national characters, enclose the name in quotation marks. You can drop as many columns as you want in one DROP statement.

To display a column that was previously dropped, specify that column name in the RESET statement. However, doing so also resets all column attributes (such as the SAS variable name format) to their default values.