Hack 3.13 Inserting Blank Lines in PROC PRINT Output

SAS Programming Professionals,

Did you know that you can make PRINT procedure output more readable by inserting blank lines?

If you are still tethered to using good old PROC PRINT to create reports for your users, then you know how crowded some of the listings can be when you have a lot of data to print.  The BLANKLINE option of PROC PRINT allows you to insert a blank line every N rows.  Here is an example:

proc sort data=sashelp.class out=class;

      by sex;

run;

proc print noobs data=class sumlabel blankline=5;

     

by sex;

sum weight height;

label sex = "Gender";

title1 "Class Roster By Gender";

run;

The BLANKLINE option on our PROC PRINT statement specifies for SAS to insert a blank line after every five lines of output.  The result looks, in part, like this:

Gender=F

Name	Age	Height	Weight
Alice	13	56.5	84.0
Barbara	13	65.3	98.0
Carol	14	62.8	102.5
Jane	12	59.8	84.5
Janet	15	62.5	112.5
Joyce	11	51.3	50.5
Judy	14	64.3	90.0
Louise	12	56.3	77.0
Mary	15	66.5	112.0
Gender		545.3	811.0

Notice the nice blank line between Janet and Joyce.  I like to set the value to either 10 or 20 on those rare occasions when I am creating long listings with PROC PRINT.  I wonder what value you will end up using.

Best of luck in all your SAS endeavors!

----MMMMIIIIKKKKEEEE

(aka Michael A. Raithel)

Excerpt from the book:  Did You Know That?  Essential Hacks for Clever SAS Programmers

http://www.amazon.com/Michael-A.-Raithel/e/B001K8GG90/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

I plan to post each and every one of the hacks in the book to social media on a weekly basis.  Please pass them along to colleagues who you know would benefit.