I agree with all of the point already made. What helped me the most was reading a book provided to me by the recruiter, from the hiring manager once I got the job (The Little SAS Book: A Primer, Fifth Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1612903436/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_UJTpCb6HWH35C). Between this, online training from SAS (many are free), and Googleing, I was surprised on how quickly I could function at a competent level. Reading existing programs from others also helps a lot as well, since it might be more applicable than the random examples on the internet. Good luck!
Hey, another IR/SAS redditor!
If you can find the time, there is an excellent Coursera on Practical Learning Analytics taught by a Michigan prof that uses R and is aimed in part at IRs. If it is still running or you can get access to the videos, I highly recommend it.
I have found <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Codys-Cleaning-Techniques-Using-Third/dp/1629607967">Cody's Data Cleaning Techniques Using SAS</a> helpful as a reference. I also keep the Little SAS Book on hand.
Could you use SAS University Edition? It's free (for non commerical use) and runs as a virtual RedHat server in VirtualBox.
Are you sure the blank space is a recognized space character? There are in fact different kinds of space characters, and some which appear as a space to a human are not considered as a space to a machine. Excel struggles with this, so I assume SAS could too.
So. Where is your data from? If its a CSV, open it up in a hex editor and see what specific thing is being used as a space, and see if its a regular space. A hex editor is a text editor for programers which lets you see a little further into what characters are specifically used.
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I use this one on my Mac: https://hexfiend.com
IDK about windows... maybe notepad++ has it as a feature?
Sounds like you are going to take the job, but the best book you can buy is The Little SAS Book. I have been a SAS developer for about 5 years now and still pull this guy out whenever something random comes up that I can't remember. Very well written and organized like a true reference guide rather than a textbook.
I used Learning SAS by Example in a SAS course to prep for the BASE exam and I found it to be pretty helpful. It's a little outdated, but starting from scratch it has some pretty solid examples to get you started on the basic concepts.
I used this dataset in my Data Mining course at Uni: https://www.kaggle.com/c/GiveMeSomeCredit
Also, if you want to get into Credit Scoring look into getting this book: https://www.amazon.com/Credit-Risk-Scorecards-Implementing-Intelligent/dp/047175451X
Everyone I know who are into Credit Scoring either learned from this book or from a mentor who learned from this book.
Hope those help.
The little SAS book is pretty good. Seconding /u/Euphoric_Journey .. youtube is pretty much your goto place. SAS community will be of great help for intermediate to advanced stuff.
There is this app if you guys are running Visual Analytics https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sas.android.bimobile&hl=en
There is also SASBIWS - you can write a stored proc that has html output and use your phone to browse to it