ARCHIVED: In SAS, how do I make my variable names more descriptive?

The variable names in SAS can have a maximum length of 32 characters; however, sometimes this may not make the variable names descriptive enough for use at a later date, or for use by others.

You can use the label statement to add descriptive labels to your variables. The following example creates a data set called scores which contains the variables name (student name) and score (score on the final exam):

  DATA scores;
     INPUT name $ score;
     LABEL name = 'student name'
           score = 'score on the final exam';
  RUN;