This range is repeated or overlapped - sas

Question

Now the question I have is I have a bigger problem as I am getting "this range is repeated or overlapped"... To be specific my values of label are repeating I mean my format has repeated values like a=aa b=aa c=as kind of. How do I resolve this error. When I use the hlo=M as muntilqbel option it gives double the data...
I am mapping like below.
Santhan=Santhan
Chintu=Santhan
Please suggest a solution.

Answer 1

To convert data to a FORMAT use the CNTLIN= option on PROC FORMAT. But first make sure the data describes a valid format. So read the data from the file.
data myfmt ;
infile 'myfile.txt' dsd truncover ;
length fmtname $32 start $100 value $200 ;
fmtname = '$MYFMT';
input start value ;
run;
Make sure to set the lengths of START and VALUE to be long enough for any actual values your source file might have.
Then make sure it is sorted and you do not have duplicate codes (START values).
proc sort data=myfmt out=myfmt_clean nodupkey ;
by start;
run;
The SAS log will show if any observations were deleted because of duplicate START values.
If you do have duplicate values then examine the dataset or original text file to understand why and determine how you want to handle the duplicates. The PROC SORT step above will keep just one of the duplicates. You might just has exact duplicates, in which case keeping only one is fine. Or you might want to collapse the duplicate observations into a single observation and concatenate the multiple decodes into one long decode.
If you want you can add a record that will add the functionality of the OTHER keyword of the VALUE statement in PROC FORMAT. You can use that to set a default value, like 'Value not found', to decode any value you might encounter that was not in your original source file.
data myfmt_final;
set myfmt_clean end=eof;
output;
if eof then do;
start = ' ';
label = 'Value not found';
hlo = 'O' ;
output;
end;
run;
Then use PROC FORMAT to make the format from the cleaned up data file.
proc format cntlin = myfmt_final;
run;
To convert a FORMAT to a dataset use the CNTLOUT= option on PROC FORMAT.
For example if you had created this format previously.
proc format ;
value $myfmt 'ABC'='ABC' 'BCD'='BCD' 'BCD1'='BCD' 'BCD2'='BCD' ;
run;
then you can use another PROC FORMAT step to make a dataset. Use the SELECT statement if you format catalog has more than one format defined and you just want one (or some) of them.
proc format cntlout=myfmt ;
select $myfmt ;
run;
Then you can use that dataset to easily make a text file. For example a comma delimited file.
data _null_;
set myfmt ;
file 'myfmt.txt' dsd ;
put start label;
run;
The result would be a text file that looks like this:
ABC,ABC
BCD,BCD
BCD1,BCD
BCD2,BCD

Answer 2

You get this error because you have the same code that maps to two different categories. I'm going to guess you likely did not import your data correctly from your text file and ended up getting some values truncated but without the full process it's an educated guess.
This will work fine:
proc format;
value $ test
'a'='aa' 'b'='aa' 'c'='as'
;
run;
This version will not work, because a is mapped to two different values, so SAS will not know which one to use.
proc format;
value $ badtest
'a'='aa'
'a' = 'ba'
'b' = 'aa'
'c' = 'as';
run;
This generates the error regarding overlaps in your data.
The way to fix this is to find the duplicates and determine which code they should actually map to. PROC SORT can be used to get your duplicate records.