Hack 5.2 Identifying Variables That Do Not Have Labels

SAS Programming Professionals,

Did you know that you can easily create a report showing which variables in a SAS data set are missing labels?

You can do this by accessing the COLUMNS table in the SAS Dictionary tables.  Here is an example:

libname ProdData "G:\Data Delivery\ImportantData";

%macro varlmss(LIBname,DSName);

title "Variables with Missing Labels in Data Set &DSName.";

proc sql;

      select name label="Variable Name"

            from dictionary.columns

                  where libname = "&LIBNAME"

                  and memname = upcase("&DSName")

                  and memtype = "DATA"

                  and label=" ";

quit;

%mend;

%VARLMSS(ProdData, Delivery01);

The example begins with a LIBNAME statement which identifies the SAS data library of our target data set:  Delivery01.  That is the data set we want to check for missing variable labels.

Next, we have the VARLMSS macro which accepts two parameters:

•        LIBname – the libname of the SAS data library that holds the target data set
•        DSName – the name of the target data set

The macro uses PROC SQL to access the COLUMNS dictionary table which holds information about every variable in every SAS data set allocated to our program.  We subset the COLUMNS table by reading only rows that match the LIBNAME, MEMNAME (target data set name), and have missing values for LABEL.  (Don’t worry about memtype = "DATA"; that is just to ensure that we only access information about SAS data sets; not views or other objects).  The result is a nice report of all of the variables in Delivery01 that do not have labels.

This is a great QC check to use for SAS data sets you intend to deliver to a client!

Best of luck in all your SAS endeavors!