For example, data table contains student grades for the term. Each grade is one record and the term, program, student id information are the same for the student. The following data step can be used to order the data table and then concatenate the grade records into something like ‘A/A/B/B+/A’ for each student.
proc sort data= one;
by groupvar1 groupvar2 groupvar3;
run;
data two;
set one;
by groupvar1 groupvar2 groupvar3;
firstgroup = first.groupvar2;
lastgroup = last.groupvar2;
retain catvar;
if firstgroup =1 then catvar=trim(targetvar);
else catvar=catx('/',catvar, targetvar);
if lastgroup ne 1 then delete;
keep groupvar1 groupvar2 catvar;
run;