customized printing with proc report (chapter 15)math.unm.edu/~james/sas8.pdfcustomized printing...

Customized printing with PROC REPORT (Chapter 15)

PROC PRINT is fairly limited in terms of how much you can customizeoutput. PROC REPORT is more difficult to use but also more flexible.Default behavior is similar to PROC PRINT.

SAS Programming October 7, 2014 1 / 50

PROC REPORT


PROC REPORT

With PROC REPORT, you can specify column widths and use labels forvariables instead of variable names. There are other differences, such asthat the observation number is not included, and there isn’t a blank linebetween variable names and the start of the data.

To list which variables you want in the output, you use COLUMN insteadof VAR.


PROC REPORT


PROC REPORT: output in SAS Studio


PROC REPORT: writing to Word file

You can make your output generated by PROC REPORT (or any otherprocedure) saved as an .rtf (WORD) file by using the Output DeliverySystem. This is also the way to generate PDFs of your graphs fromSGPLOT and similar procedures.


PROC REPORT: creating Word documents with ODS



The Word Document isn’t pretty. It has just concatenated the outputfrom PROC PRINT and PROC REPORT.SAS seems to fill up the entire width of the Word Document with theoutput, so to some extent it ignores the widths that you specify, but therelative widths for the different columns will still matter.


Creating .csv files to be read in by Excel

You can also use ODS to create Excel-readable files using a similarapproach. E.g.,

ods csv file="myfile.csv"

proc report data=mydata;

run;

ods csv close;

This is quite useful in consulting situations. You might consult withsomeone who wants you to use SAS but doesn’t use SAS themselves. Ifthey want you to clean up the data and send the processed data back asan Excel file, this is a good way to do it.


PROC REPORT


PROC REPORT: grouping variables

you can also group variables into arbitrary categories.


PROC REPORT: grouping variables with blanks forrepeated values


PROC REPORT: computing variables

You can also do computations within PROC REPORT that you wouldnormally only expect to be able to do within DATA STEPS. The idea hereis to use “Computing Blocks”.


PROC REPORT: two grouping variables


PROC REPORT: two grouping variables, linux .lst file

Here the BREAK command inserted a line break between levels ofcountry, which is ignored in SAS Studio and the .rtf file.


PROC REPORT: two grouping variables, linux .lst file

Changing the order of variables in the COLUMN statement changes theorder in the output (BREAK statement is ignored here in SAS Studio—inthe linux version, the output will be double spaced).


PROC REPORT: generating subtotals

q



q


PROC REPORT: computed variables

You can also do some computation within PROC REPORT instead ofdoing it within a datastep by using COMPUTE blocks.


PROC REPORT: generating summary statistics

Here we sum to get the total number of units sold and their dollaramounts. You can also get the mean, median or other basic statistics,rather than the sum.


PROC REPORT: comments in reports

Sometimes it is useful to have comments which can be long characterstrings, such as in a questionaire or comments for a doctor’s visit. In thiscase, you can use SPLIT=’ ’ as an option for PROC REPORT and theFLOW option for the DEFINE statement to allow comments to flow overto a new line without interfering with other variables.


PROC REPORT: comments in reports


PROC REPORT: multicolumn displays

You can use PROC REPORT to display your data in multiple columns,which can be useful for saving space. Unfortunately I couldn’t get this todo anything in SAS Studio or the Word document, but it worked in Linuxin the .lst file. Unfortunately, using the ODS to create an .rtf file inLinux also failed to create multiple columns, so this feature seems to be oflimited use.


Multicolumn displays

A place in my life where I have wanted to generate automatedmulticolumn displays is in grant proposals or in CVs where I have wantedto have columns of names of collaborators that are alphabetized by name.If you change the list of people, it is a pain to change the list of people.

I encountered this problem about a year ago writing grant proposals, so Icame up with a specialized R program to deal with it. Given an input filewith a list of collaborators, it generates the LATEXcode to make a nice littletable of the collaborators in two columns.


Multicolumn displays: example of lists of collaborators

The main reason for wanting the list to be in two columns is to savespace. Here is what the final output might look like on my CV (biosketchfor NSF, which is required to be at most 2 pages):


Multicolumn displays: example of lists of collaborators

It is a pain to modify this. If I develop a new collaborator who’s namedoesn’t come later than “Zhu” alphabetically, then I have to insert thissomewhere in the list of names, and this will change the table quite a bit,so that collaborators will have to be moved from the right to left columnand vice versa. It’s just a pain to do a lot of copying and pasting. If youapply for several grants per year (I’ve done 8 in the last two years...) andyour list of collaborators is changing rapidly, then you start thinking ofautomating the problem.


Multicolumn displays: collaborator example, plain text data

q


Multicolumn displays: collaborator example, plain text data

To make the problem easier for myself, I created a separate column withthe researcher’s last name even though that is repeated with their fullname. I want to alphabetize by last name but display the full name. Thisshouldn’t have been necessary, but just made things easier. Here is the Rcode to generate the LATEX

jamess-mbp:2013 superjames$ cat collaborators.r

x <- read.table("collaborators.txt",sep=";")

y <- x$V2[order(x$V1)] # sort full names and affiliation by

# lastname

if(length(y) %% 2 == 1) y <- c(y," ") # make even number of cells

y <- matrix(y,ncol=2,byrow=F) # arrange into matrix

write("\\begin{tabular}{ll}",file="collaborators.tex",append=T)

for(i in 1:floor(length(x$V1)/2)) {

write(paste("\\ \\",y[i,1],"&","\\ \\",y[i,2],"\\\\"),file=

"collaborators.tex",append=T)

print(i)

}

write("\\end{tabular}",file="collaborators.tex",append=T)SAS Programming October 7, 2014 38 / 50


It would be reasonably straightforward to do the same sort of thing in SASwith PROC REPORT except that the minimum page size is 15 lines, sothis is slightly difficult. Here is an attempt.


Multicolumn displays: another attempt in SAS

q


Multicolumn displays: another attempt in SAS

Notes: the main reason for using PROC REPORT instead of PROCPRINT was that I didn’t want the the observation number printed with thedata.

Also, I couldn’t figure out how to get SAS to print \\ at the end of eachline. If you think of a way, let me know!

This is a little tricky because the backslash is a special character in SASwhich sometimes is used for filepaths, sometimes to indicate breaks inwords, but there is usually a way to print special characters in languages,so I suspect there is a solution.


Other tips for PROC REPORT

Other features of PROC REPORT are

1. you can sort data within PROC SORT using the ORDER optionwithin your DEFINE statements (instead of DISPLAY, type ORDER).This way you don’t have to use a PROC SORT outside of the PROCREPORT, although this is just a matter of convenience

2. you can also supress printing of a variable even though it is used tosort the order of the output in the data. For example, it you typedefine country / group noprint;

then items will be grouped by country but the country name is notprinted

3. character variables and ranges can be computed within COMPUTEblocks using logic statements (IF etc.)


ACROSS variables

When you have two grouping variables, you can make one of them anACROSS variable, which essentially turns your report into a 2x2 table.


ACROSS variables


ACROSS variables

The comma tells SAS that you want the number of units within each levelof model, instead of reporting the number of units as a separate variable.Without the comma, it is reporting the number of observations that havethe given combination of model of country, which is 1 for each combinationfor this data, and then it gives the marginal total for the number of units.The use of the comma assumes that you have an ACROSS variable first,then another non-grouping variable. To transpose the report, do thefollowing


ACROSS variables


RBREAK

RBREAK additionally creates a row of marginal totals.


Two-way tables

It is a bit more natural to use PROC TABULATE for two-way tables, andthat is what we’ll look at next time...


customized printing with proc report (chapter 15)math.unm.edu/~james/sas8.pdfcustomized printing...

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