ERROR: P does not have a numeric suffix (SAS, RENAME)

Question

After having worked out a bunch of other errors I'm left with the following

ERROR: P does not have a numeric suffix.

From all the info I've been able to find this happens a lot when using PROC TRANSPOSE, however I'm not using that here (and don't anywhere else in this code).

Data Spillover_HE (rename=(F1=FY F2=BN F3=employeeID F4=grade_subject_ID
F5=AsmtID_agg F6=linkB F7=subgroupID F8=w F9=MGP_SE F10=Residual_SE
F11=Residual_Var F12=mgp_var F13=student_n F14=calcID F15=sumwt F16=MGP
F17=ave_prescore F18=p_imp F19=p_postImp F20=p_sped F21=p_sped_rs
F22=p_sped_se_ss F23=p_sped_st F24=p_sped_tt F25=P-ell F26=p_ed
F27=p_hispanic F28=p_black F29=p_white F30=p_asian F31=p_other
F32=p_blahispmale F33=p_overaundcred F34=p_retained F35=p_transfer
F36=p_top10 F37=p_top5 F38=p_top1 F39=p_bot10 F40=p_bot5 F41=p_bot1
F42=target_population F43=mean_residual_var F44=P_0_5)); run;

Obviously I have a bunch of variables that start with "p". None of them are underlined in the log. I'm using SAS Base, and got the same error in SAS Enterprise Guide.

Not sure what my next move should be. Thanks.

To debug things like this use a binary method. Remove half of rename, if no error, then its in other half. Go back to that half and repeat until you narrow it down. — Reeza
And write your code in a more organized fashion - each of these renames should be on a separate line, lined up neatly so you can see each variable name clearly. — Joe

Robert Soszyński Robert Soszyński · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-21T18:47:16

A dash is not a correct character in a variable name.

Replace F25=P-ell into F25=P_ell.

You can use dash to specify a range of variables e.g. rename=(x1-x100=y1-y100). This code renames 100 variables with prefix x to y.

ERROR: P does not have a numeric suffix (SAS, RENAME)

1 Answers