Reading in an existing dataset

[dkaplan]

I am just learning sas and something very simple is eluding me.

I am trying to read specific variables from an existing dataset into a new dataset. I tried something like

data newdataset;
infile olddataset;
input col1 col2;
run;

but I get an error? Can infile only be used with raw data files? i.e. infile = "c:\dirName\rawFile.txt";
Or can it also pull in an existing dataset?

 

[jj72uk]

You;re right, infile is for raw files, txt, csv, dat etc etc

If your exsisting dataset is in your work library you can simply do:

data newdataset (keep = col1 col2);
set olddataset;
run;

Or if the exsisting dataset isnt in your work library but elsewhere you can use a libname statement:

libname lib1 'c:\mysas' /*where lib1 is your choice of library name and were C:\.. is the path to the dataset*/

data newdataset (keep = col1 col2);
set lib1.olddataset;
run;

 

[dkaplan]

Thanks, jj72uk.

This works perfectly.