First Friday of a full week

I had a recent request to determine the first Friday of the first full week of the month. The NWKDOM() function makes this very easy to accomplish since it returns the nth occurance of a weekday for the supplied month and year.

NWKDOM(n, weekday, month, year)

• n - numeric week of the month
• weekday - day of the week with 1 = Sunday
• month - numeric month value
• year - numeric year value

data _null_ ;
  mo   = 1 ;
  year = 2014 ;
  if nwkdom( 1, 1, mo, year ) > nwkdom( 1, 6, mo, year ) 
    then firstfullfriday = nwkdom( 2, 6, mo, year ) ;
  else firstfullfriday = nwkdom( 1, 6, mo, year ) ;
  put firstfullfriday worddate. ;
run ;

January 10, 2014

Validate SAS

Sometimes the exact same code on the same OS but on a different machine will not produced the same result, or more likely will produce an error on one machine but not another. If that happens, consider using the SASIQ.EXE utility to verify that SAS is properly installed.

The below macro assumes the sastest folder is below the install folder (!SASROOT). When you run the macro a new subfolder named validate_yyyymmdd.000 will be created. In my case, a 349 page PDF file named sasiq.pdf was created. The first page (see below) is a quick summary followed by details showing expected vs actual checksum values for critical SAS files.

%macro validatesas( path = c:\temp\ ) ;
  systask command "'%sysget(sasroot)\sastest\sasiq.exe' -outputpath &path." wait ;
%mend ;

For more information, see this link: http://support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/validation/sasiq.html

Macro IN Operator

Starting in SAS 9.2 you can use the macro IN operator via the MINOPERATOR option and associated MINDELIMITER option. The MINOPERATOR is OFF (NOMINDELIMITER) by default and can be used as a global option (e.g. options minoperator ; ) or the more flexible and preferred macro option (after the slash [ / ] on the macro definition) as shown in the below example. This is especially critical for stored and compiled macros as the options are reflected at compilation time.

The default delimiter is a BLANK so if you want to a comma, specify it using the MINDELIMITER= option.

%macro test( state ) / minoperator mindelimiter=',' ;
  %if %upcase( &state. ) in( CO, KS, MO, IL ) %then %do ;
    %put its in there ;
  %end ;
  %else %put not found ;
%mend ;

%test( KS )
%test( NY )

119  %test( KS )
its in there
120  %test( NY )
not found

If you want to use this as a negative version [ NOT IN() ] you need to place the NOT around the entire expression, not just next to the IN operator as follows:

%macro test( state ) / minoperator mindelimiter=',' ;
  %if not( %upcase( &state. ) in( CO, KS, MO, IL ) ) %then %do ;
    %put its in there ;
  %end ;
  %else %put not found ;
%mend ;

%test( ks )
%test( ny )

8    %test( ks )
not found
9    %test( ny )
its in there

Using Wingdings in PROC REPORT

The idea for this post came from the book "PROC REPORT by Example" - Techniques for Building Professional Reports Using SAS by Lisa Fine.

To get a listing of Wingdings (or other available fonts), click on Windows | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Character Map. In the below case, Wingdings was chosen as the font and the bolded down arrow is associated with hex code EA.

<

An example using the up (E9) and down (EA) wingding fonts with proc report can be seen below.

proc format ;
  value arrow
    low -< 14 = "ea"x
    14 - high = "e9"x ;

  value color 
    low -< 14 = red
    14 - high = green ;
run ;

ods listing close ;
ods html file = "c:\temp\wingdings.html" ;
  proc report data = sashelp.class( obs = 5 ) nowd ;
    column name age direction ;
    define name / display ;
    define age  / analysis  ;
    define direction /  
       computed 
       format = arrow. 
       style( column ) = [ font_face = wingdings just = c ] ;

    compute direction ;
      direction = age.sum ;
      call define( "direction", "style", "style = [ foreground = color. ]" ) ;
    endcomp ;
  run ;
ods html close ;
ods listing ;