Joining tables with null variable 1

[DonaZ]

I cannot join the two tables because of the following problem:

Table 1 Table 2
Code Code Description
AA AA Blue
002 002 Red
Do not care
BB BB Purple
048 048 White
678 678 Pink


I'm trying to join the two tables so I can get the descriptions from table 2. It does not work? What can I do if the code is null but I have a description? (see the third code from the top).
Is it possible to capture that information "do not care" by joining the two tables?

Thank you for your time.

 

[ChrisW75]

Hi Donaz,
There shouldn't be a problem just doing a straight join from table2 onto table1 using either MERGE in a datastep or a Proc SQL join, a blank value will join to a blank value (in fact this sometimes causes problems in my work), so I don't know what the problem here is. In what way is this not working for you?
Another method of doing this is loading the descriptions into a format. A not so well known method of Proc Format allows you to read a dataset into a format. Let me know if you want help doing that.

One issue that might cause problems in joining your 2 files together is if the CODE variables are of different lengths in the 2 datasets and are padded with spaces after the values. They might LOOK the same but to the computer, seem different.
I hope that this helps.

Chris
Business Analyst, Code Monkey, Data Wrangler.
SAS Guru.

 

[DonaZ]

You're right Chris it works. I looked at my codes from Table2 again and found duplicates.

Thank you for your patience while I keep making these dumb mistakes.

 

[ChrisW75]

Donaz - If I had no patience for "dumb mistakes" as you call them, I'd have lost my temper with myself a long time ago.
Even now I still do things like that. The only difference is that having done it a few hundred times, I can pick the problem alot quicker

Chris
Business Analyst, Code Monkey, Data Wrangler.
SAS Guru.