Rename Variable Name Starting with Number in SAS

Question

I have some results that came from a relational database in a SAS data set. All of the variable names start with numbers, so I can't rename them or access them in a data step. Is there any way to rename them or access them without getting the data out of the RDBMS again?

Answer 1

The answer given by Joe has some helpful information, but I actually discovered that SAS has a (somewhat automatic) method for handling this. When you query data from an RDBMS, SAS will actually replace any column names starting with numbers with an underscore for the first character. So 1994Q4 becomes _994Q4. Thus, you can simply access the data that way.

SAS will, however, preserve the original name from the RDBMS as the variable title, so it will display as 1994Q4 (or whatever) in table view mode.

Answer 2

options validvarname=any; will allow you to access them, and perhaps even use the dataset - you can enclose an "illegal" variable name in "variable name"n (quotes then an n afterwards) to make a name literal which is equivalent to a variable name (like in Oracle using "variable name").

If you want to make them easier to use, you can do something like

proc sql;
select catx(' ','rename',name,'=',cats('_',name,';')) into :renamelist separated by ' '
  from dictionary.columns
  where libname='WORK' and memname='DATASETNAME'; *perhaps AND ANYDIGIT(substr(name,1,1)) as well;
quit;

proc datasets lib=work;
modify datasetname;
&renamelist;
quit;

You could also try setting options validvarname=v7; before you connect to the RDBMS as it's possible SAS will do this for you (depending on the situation) if you have it set that way (and don't currently).