Book excerpt: Learn to write SAS programs quickly and efficiently. Programming in SAS is flexible, but it can also be overwhelming. Many novice and experienced programmers learn how to write programs that use the DATA step and macros, but they often don’t realize that a simpler or better way can achieve the same results. In a user-friendly tutorial style, Practical and Efficient SAS® Programming: The Insider's Guide provides general SAS programming tips that use the tools available in Base SAS, including the DATA step, the SAS macro facility, and SQL. Drawing from the author’s 30 years of SAS programming experience, this book offers self-contained sections that describe each tip or trick and present numerous examples. It therefore serves as both an easy reference for a specific question, and a useful cover-to-cover read. As a bonus, the utility programs included in the appendixes will help you simplify your programs, as well as help you develop a sleek and efficient coding style. With this book, you will learn how to do the following: use the DATA step, the SAS macro facility, SQL, and other Base SAS tools more efficiently choose the best tool for a task use lookup tables simulate recursion with macros read metadata with the DATA step create your own programming style in order to write programs that are easily maintained Using this book, SAS programmers of all levels will discover new techniques to help them write programs quickly and efficiently.