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sassas-macroenterprise-guide

special characters in alias Proc sql- SAS 9.3

I need to have a special character (% and space) in the alsias name of a proc sql statement.

proc sql DQUOTE=ANSI;
create table final_data as
select a.column1 as XYZ, 
((a.colum2/b.colum2)-1) as "% VS LY"
from table1 a
join table2 b on a.colum3=b.colum3;
quit;

according to the documention, having the option proc sql DQUOTE=ANSI should work..

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/acreldb/63647/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a001393333.htm

However, I'm getting this error in SAS 9.3

ERROR: The value % VS LY is not a valid SAS name.

What should I do to make this work?

Thank you so much in advance!

Solution

  • Perhaps a simpler solution would be to use standard naming and a SAS label. If the computed value is between 0 and 1 you can also add a SAS format.

    ((a.colum2/b.colum2)-1) as vs_ly_pct label='% VS LY' format=percent5.2

    If you truly want non-standard column names, you will also need to set

    options validvarname = any;

    before the Proc SQL.