1. a useful SAS 9.2 feature I wasn’t aware of *
Dr. Arthur Tabachneck Director, Data Management
* stolen from a SAS-L post by Mike Zdeb

2. suppose you had the following task
you’re given an Excel spreadsheet
with separate worksheets for each day
you have to combine them into one SAS file
adding a new column showing the date (i.e., each worksheet’s sheet name)

3. part 1: read all of the worksheet names
a solution
part 1: read all of the worksheet names
libname x ‘c:\thedata.xls'; proc sql noprint; select catt('x.',memname,'n') into :dsets separated by ' ' from dictionary.tables where libname eq 'X'; quit;
Note: we ALL knew that!

4. a solution
part 2: use indsname option to get and assign the dates
data want; set &dsets. indsname=dsn; date=input(scan(dsn,2,"'$"),date9.); run;
Since DSN will appear as x.’08Feb2010$’n

5. Questions? Your comments and questions are valued and encouraged.
Contact the author:
Dr. Arthur Tabachneck
Director, Data Management
Insurance Bureau of Canada
Toronto, Ontario L3T 5K9