Here are some suggested Enhanced Editor settings and related best practices. Select Tools | Options | Enhanced Editor... and enabled Show line numbers, Insert spaces for tabs and Replace spaces with tabs on file open. I also like to set my tab size to 2 spaces (see below).
The other suggested setting is achieved by selecting Tools | Options | Preferences... and setting Recently used file list to the maximum value of 30 entries.
With those settings in place here are some suggested best practices when writing code:
- One line of code (ends in semicolon) per line making it easier to read and maintain
- Indent each subservient line with 2 spaces
- Start each SQL column with a comma so it is self contained and easy to comment out
- Align columns as appropriate to make it easier to read and maintian
Example
proc sql noprint stimer ;
connect to odbc ( "%getconnection( server = Prod )" ) ;
create table commodity as
select *
from connection to odbc
(
select commoditycode
/* , commodityabbreviation
, commodityname */
, count(*) as count
from arm.common.commodity
where commoditycode = '0041'
group by commoditycode
/* , commodityabbreviation
, commodityname */
order by commoditycode
/* , commodityabbreviation
, commodityname */
) ;
disconnect from odbc ;
quit ;
Compare and contrast the ease of using leading commas versus a conditional trailing comma in this macro based example:
%do i=1 %to 10;
, yr&i._acre_qty as acre&i
, yr&i._yield_qty as yield&i
%end;
or
%do i=1 %to 10;
%if &i<10 %then %do;
yr&i._acre_qty as acre&i ,
yr&i._yield_qty as yield&i ,
%end;
%else %do;
yr&i._acre_qty as acre&i ,
yr&i._yield_qty as yield&i
%end;
%end;
