SAS programming language for dummies

SAS programming language has developed for half a century. The result is amazing: new stenography methods have appeared. These are not obvious to the rhinestone.

Five basic moments that need to be taken into account at the beginning of the study of SAS XRUST:
— This is not just a programming language. This is a set of possibilities. Unlike many other programming languages, it has built -in procedures and functions designed to work with data and statistics. Other languages, such as Python or Java, require additional code libraries and packages to add the capabilities you need. With SAS all this is; You just need to know where to look for.
— This is 4GL. This language is known as the fourth-generation language, which means that it provides a higher level of abstraction than functional or object-oriented languages, such as C or Java. Built -in operators and procedures reduce the number of lines of code and logic that you need to create to perform your tasks.
— The SAS DATA step is performed in two stages: compilation time and execution time. During the compilation, the syntax is performed, the code is converted into the machine language, the types and lengths of data are determined and the programs of the program data are created. During execution, SAS reads and processes data, performs calculations and evaluates conditional logic, and then records any output or files. Knowing how these two stages work can help you write and debug effective SAS. You can imagine the SAS macro -language as a text generator: this is a code that can generate — in several lines of logic and cycles — much larger than code, which will then be compiled and launched at the stage of execution. He is powerful and dangerous at the same time. That is why it is better to first force your main code to work, and then add any macrology that you want for conditions and cycles.
— there are many ways to make almost anything in the language. As a programming language, SAS has existed for more than 50 years, and the syntax, created a decade ago, has been working today. But for most tasks, there are also new and best ways to perform this work.

Xrust SAS programming language for dummies