Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!sharkey!math.lsa.umich.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!MACC!PRAHL From: PRAHL@MACC.WISC.EDU (Walter Prahl, MACC) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.sas-l Subject: Re: saving output from TABULATE Message-ID: <20021313322242@vms3.macc.wisc.edu> Date: 13 Feb 90 19:32:00 GMT Sender: "SAS(r) Discussion" Reply-To: "Walter Prahl, MACC" Lines: 32 Approved: NETNEWS@PSUVM.BITNET Gateway X-VMS-To: IN%"sas-l@ohstvma.bitnet",PRAHL Howard Schreier suggests PROC SUMMARY as an alternative to PROC TABULATE when one wants to create an output dataset. I agree, and would only add that one can often more or less duplicate the functioning of PROC TABULATE through a combination of PROC SUMMARY and PROC TRANSPOSE; SUMMARY alone will often not be sufficient. TRANSPOSE is, unfortunately, probably the most underused proc in Base SAS. People often resort to complex data step programming to do what TRANSPOSE was designed to do. Phil Gallagher suggests that an output dataset from PROC TABULATE is not a very well defined concept. While I agree that it is not entirely obvious or clear what such a thing would look like in general, I have often enough wanted to create a dataset that I could quite precisely define and that would represent something similar to what TABULATE generates. It is in these cases that I have used SUMMARY in combination with some other processing of SUMMARY's output data set (such as with TRANSPOSE). I'm not sure if one could define a reasonable dataset format that would capture all of the current variations in TABULATE's functioning, but it would certainly not be hard to define a format that would cover a large number of these variations. Basically, TABULATE would have to generate one or more auxilliary variables and place them in the dataset, like the way SUMMARY generates the _TYPE_ variable. By the way, I'm surprised that nobody has yet mentioned the fact that the addition of an OUT= option for TABULATE has been a SUGI ballot item for several years now. So this isn't exactly a new idea! ---------------------------------- Walter Prahl (608) 262-0284 University of Wisconsin -- MACC Internet: prahl@vms.macc.wisc.edu Bitnet: prahl@wiscmacc.bitnet