SAS Syntax

SAS was designed to be easy to use:

• Every SAS statement ends with a semicolon (;) !

• Words in SAS statements are separated by blanks or by special characters (such as the equal sign).

• SAS statements can begin in any column.

• Any number of SAS statements can appear on a single line.

• A SAS statement can be continued from one line to the next, as long as no word is split.

• SAS statements can be entered in lowercase, uppercase, or a mixture of the two.

  Note: Within this documentation, SAS program examples are written using upper case for SAS program language components and lower case for user defined specifications such as variable and data set names. This was done for documentation purposes only and is not required when writing SAS programs.

In writing SAS programs it is very easy to forget a semicolon here or there; this is the most common mistakle made by beginning SAS programmers. Always check that each SAS statement ends in a semicolon before executing your program.

Note: Do not include semicolons or blank lines in your data.