DROP

DROP

Drops a column so that it cannot be selected in a view descriptor.

Optional statement

Applies to: access descriptor

Interacts with: RESET, SELECT

Syntax
Details

Syntax

DROP column-identifier-1 <...column-identifier-n>;

Details

The DROP statement drops the specified column from an access descriptor. The column therefore cannot be selected by a view descriptor that is based on the access descriptor. However, the specified column in the DBMS table remains unaffected by this statement.

An editing statement, such as DROP, must follow the CREATE and database-description statements when you create an access descriptor. See CREATE for more information on the order of statements.

The column-identifier argument can be either the column name or the positional equivalent from the LIST statement, which is the number that represents the column's place in the access descriptor. For example, to drop the third and fifth columns, submit the following statement:

drop 3 5;

If the column name contains special characters or national characters, enclose the name in quotes. You can drop as many columns as you want in one DROP statement.

To display a column that was previously dropped, specify that column name in the RESET statement. However, doing so also resets all the column's attributes (such as SAS variable name, format, and so on) to their default values.

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	Optional statement
Applies to:	access descriptor
Interacts with:	RESET, SELECT