[Download-List] EVAL IF-THEN FROM SECONDARY FILE

[Jeffery G. Summers]

I'm trying to avoid:

 

1.	Doing additional changes in Excel after-the-fact, and/or
2.	Creating additional computed columns

 

We're involved in a pilot study and must provide data to the think-tank in
charge of the study.

 

The requirements for several fields are to fill in any blank values for
fields with "9" for however many characters for the field in question.  I
don't understand why the think-tank can ignore "9999" and not "blank" but I
must comply with the data requirements nevertheless! :-)

 

For many of these fields in DOWNLOAD I'm able to do:

 

EVAL "IF field THEN field ELSE '999'"

 

I'm having trouble with SECONDARY.FILE fields.

 

For example, we have a field for SAT Verbal in APPLICANTS.  If I do the
DOWNLOAD statement in APPLICANTS then my logic above works fine for the
field(s) in question.  But the majority of fields come from PERSON, so
overall less fields will need to use this "IF-THEN" logic.  Otherwise I'd
use APPLICANTS as my "starting point" file.  Regardless of which file is my
primary file I'll need to have some fields like this:

 

EVAL "IF file->field THEN file->field ELSE '999'"

 

Unfortunately this only returns null values.  Is there something I should do
differently in DOWNLOAD for this logic to work or am I stuck with options #1
& #2 at the top?

 

Thanks for any suggestions!

 

Jeffery G. Summers

Transylvania University

300 N. Broadway

Lexington, KY 40508

jsummers at transy.edu

 



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