SAS find first value in column and get row number

Question

I'm trying to import and clean some file where the first rows of column 1 contains description and column names. the data begins after the row containing "BEGINDATA". Is it possible to search sas table for "BEGINDATA" and assign the row number to a macro variable? In the next data step I could use firstobs=macro variable to load only data.

Thanks for any hint!

Answer 1

Certainly! See this example.

/* Generate example data */
data have;
    do i = 1 to 10000;
        if(i = 100) then description = 'BEGINDATA';
            else call missing(description);

        value = rand('uniform');
        output;
    end;

    drop i;
run;

/* Get row where the data begins. Only keep the description variable 
   to reduce the size of the PDV */
data _null_;
    set have(keep=description);

    if(description = 'BEGINDATA') then do;
        call symputx('startrow', _N_, 'G');
        stop;
    end;
run;

/* Read from the data start row */
data want;
    set have(firstobs=&startrow.);
run;