Basic SAS Procedures

Greg Jenkins

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 Overview
• SAS procedures are functions that generally
take data in either from a data set, or
specified options, and then output some
information.
• That’s pretty vague, but we will look at
some basic SAS procedures for examples.
• Coding and options are similar for most
procedures.

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Syntax Common to Most Procedures
• Most procedures have the following general
syntax:

proc something <data=dsname options>;

<where conditional statements;>
<options;>
<by varlist;>
<label label statement as in a data step;>
<format format statement as in a data step;>
<run;> <quit;>
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Syntax Common to Most Procedures
• The “data=“ statement specifies the data set
the procedure will use, if the procedure
requires an input data set(some don’t). If
the “data=“ statement is left out the last data
set created is used.
• “Where” clause allows subsetting of data.
• “by” statement allows the processing of the
procedure separately for each level of the
“by” variable, you need to sort the input
data set by the “by” variable.
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Syntax Common to Most Procedures
• The “label” and “format” statements work
exactly the same as in the data step. The
formats and labels are removed from the
data set after the procedure is ended.
• Some procedures are interactive and start
processing when the proc statement is
submitted. Others require a “run;”
statement at the end of the procedure code
to start processing, or start processing by
reaching the beginning of another SAS
statement. 5
Syntax Common to Most Procedures
• Most procedures will end on their own after
all the procedure code is submitted, but for
“interactive” procedures, such as: proc
gplot, gchart, sql, reg, and some others; a
“quit;” statement must be used to end the
procedure unless code related to another
procedure, data step, SAS option, etc. is
reached.

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 Types of Procedures
• There are lots of them, but we’ll just discuss
a few groups, and few procedures within
those groups.
• First, we’ll look at base SAS procedures.
• The first procedures we’ll talk about are
report writing related: print, printto,
tabulate, and report.

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 Proc Print
• Used to output the contents of a SAS dataset.
• Basic syntax:

proc print <data = yourdataset> <label> <options>;

<var varlist;>
<id idvars;>
<options;>
run;
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 Proc Print
• “label” statement tells SAS whether you
want the labels or variable names of
variables used as column headers.
• The “var” statement lets you list the
variables in the data set you want printed.
• By default observations(rows) in the dataset
are identified by the row number, the “id”
statement allows you change this to a set of
variables(don’t include these variables in
the “var” statement unless you want them
printed out twice ). 9
Other Report Writing Procedures
• proc printto allows output, and log files to
be redirected to a specified text file.
• Proc report & tabulate are “fancier”
versions of proc print, they can also do
some minor calculations.

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 Basic Statistics Procedures
• The next group of basic procedures we’ll
talk about are procedures that do basic
statistics, like simple frequency
(contingency) tables, univariate statistics,
etc.
• These procedures are: proc univariate,
means, freq, rank, and corr.

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 Proc Univariate
• Calculates basic statistics for one variable,
mean, median, etc., also does tests.

proc univariate <data=dsname> <options>;

<var varlist;>
<options;>
<run;>
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 Proc Univariate
• If no variables are specified in the “var” option
the procedure will run on all the variables in the
data set specified.
• This procedure outputs a wide variety of
statistics and can also create output datasets
containing these statistics.
• Proc univariate will conduct t-tests, and tests for
non-normality(if the normal option is used).
• It will also produce histograms, probability
plots, …
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 Proc Means
• Basically a scaled down version of proc
univariate, does not conduct tests, fewer
statistics, etc.
• Its advantage over proc univariate is that it
processes quicker, and is easier to work
with if the aim is to get an output data set
that contains statistics of more than one
variable. proc univariate does not do this.
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 Proc Freq
• Basically creates frequency, and
contingency tables.

proc freq <data=dsname> <options>;

<table varlist;>
<options;>
<run;>
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 Proc Freq
• In the table statement if you want to create a
contingency table of one or more variables
join the variables by an asterisk(*).

proc freq;
table gender*smoke;
run;
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 Proc Freq
• Proc freq will do testing, approximate, and
exact.
• Outputs measures of association,
agreement, and odds ratios.
• Also has several output data sets.

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Other Basic Statistics Procedures
• Proc rank, will output a data set of ranks
based on variables from an input dataset and
various options.
• Proc corr, outputs correlation type
information, for comparisons of two
continuous variables, also does non-
parametric comparisons.

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 Utility Procedures
• These procedures are utilities, they are for
the most part work with data sets, they: sort,
edit, copy, etc. They do not generally
produce output.
• Some of the procedures we have already
seen are: proc format, proc import(using the
import wizard), proc sql(we’ll talk about
later), and proc contents.
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Brief Overview: Utility Procedures

• Proc copy – copies SAS datasets, catalogs.

• Proc datasets – works on datasets in a
library.
• Proc compare – compares two datasets.
• Proc append – concatenates data sets.
• Proc transpose – transposes data(we’ll talk
about this later)
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 Categories of Other Procedures
• SAS/STAT – statistical procedures, learn
about these for the most part in a statistics
classes.
• SAS/ACCESS – procedures for importing
data from other sources.
• SAS/OR – procedures related to operations
research(proc netwflow for network
problems, etc.)

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 Categories of Other Procedures
• SAS/ETS – statistical procedures, time
series tools
• SAS/FSP – data entry tools
• SAS/GIS – tools for GIS(Geographic
Information Systems) data
• SAS/GRAPH – graphics
• SAS/IML – Interactive matrix language
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 Categories of Other Procedures
• SAS/EIS – data warehousing tools
• SAS/QC – quality control procedures, like
proc capability(nice procedure for normal-
probability plots, etc.)
• And many, many more …

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 Output from Procedures
• Output for SAS procedures are generally
sent to the output window(interactive SAS)
or .lst file(Line Mode SAS), however some
procedures have no output or send the
output to the log window, or .log file,
• A relatively new improvement to SAS is
ODS(Output Delivery System), improves
the way output is delivered from
procedures.
• ODS still doesn’t deliver “great” output but
it can be useful, as well, it can create .pdf,
.html, .rtf, and many other file types. 24
 “GUI’s” for Procedures
• As mentioned earlier there are some
graphical user interfaces for procedures, one
that is very useful is the SAS/SQL GUI.
• The SQL GUI can be found be selecting
“tools” then “Query”.
• Another GUI is for proc import, this is the
import data wizard that you’ve seen.
• SAS/ASSIST is a GUI for some other
procedures.

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 Help on Syntax of Procedures
• If you get stuck and forget the syntax of a
procedure look it up in the “online” help.
• A keyboard short cut to find help on a
procedure is to put the cursor on the
procedure “word”(i.e. proc freq, proc
contents, etc.) in the editor window and hit
F1 and it will bring up the syntax for the
procedure(thanks to Dr. Pereira for this tip!)
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 Help on the Help!
• It’s a long running joke(although not a good
one!) that you need a SAS manual to read a
SAS manual.
• There’s a good description of SAS’s syntax
convention in the SAS OnlineDoc Version 8,
which I didn’t copy because of copyright
reasons!

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