如何在 SAS 中的 proc sql 查询中的 select 列名称“startwith”

Question

I am looking a way to select all columns name that "startwith" a specific character. My data contains the same column name multiple time with a digit number at the end and I want the code to always select all the columns regardless the last digit numbers.

For example, if I have 3 kinds of apple in my column names, the dataset will contains the column: "apple_1", "apple_2" and "apple_3". Therefore, I want to select all columns that startwith "apple_" in a proc sql statement.

Thanks you

Answer 1

In regular SAS code you can use : as a wildcard to create a variable list. You normally cannot use variable lists in SQL code, but you can use them in dataset options.

proc sql ;
create table want as 
select *
from mydata(keep= id apple_: )
;
quit;

Answer 2

Use like :

proc sql;
    select t.*
    from t
    where col like 'apple%';

If you want the _ character as well, you need to use the ESCAPE clause, because _ is a wildcard character for LIKE :

proc sql;
    select t.*
    from t
    where col like 'apple$_%' escape '$';