11-Debugging-Your-SAS-Programs推荐.pdfVIP

The Little SAS Book: A Primer, Fifth Edition Chapter 11: Debugging Your SAS Programs Problems that go away by themselves come back by themselves. Marcy E. Davis From The Official Explanations by Paul Dickson. Copyright 1980 by Delacorte Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. 11.1 Writing SAS Programs That Work Its not always easy to write a program that works the first time you run it. Even experienced SAS programmers will tell you its a delightful surprise when their programs run on the first try. The longer and more complicated the program, the more likely it is to have syntax or logic errors. But dont despair, there are a few guidelines you can follow that can make your programs run correctly sooner and help you discover errors more easily. Make Programs Easy to Read One simple thing you can do is develop the habit of writing programs in a neat and consistent manner. Programs that are easy to read are easier to debug and will save you time in the long run. The following are suggestions on how to write your programs: n Put only one SAS statement on a line. SAS allows you to put as many statements on a line as you wish, which may save some space in your program, but the saved space is rarely worth the sacrifice in readability. n Use indention to show the different parts of the program. Indent all statements within the DATA and PROC steps. This way you can tell at a glance how many DATA and PROC steps there are in a program and which statement belongs to which step. Its also helpful to further indent any statements between a DO statement and its END statement. n Use comment statements generously to document your programs. This takes some discipline but is important, especially if anyone else is likely to read or use your program. Everyone has a different programming style, and it is often impossible to figure o