Using proc freq with repeated ID variables - sas

Question

I would like to use proq freq to count the number of food types that someone consumed on a specific day(fint variable). My data is in long format with repeated idno for the different food types and different number of interview dates. However SAS hangs and does not run the code. I have more than 300,000 datalines.Is there another way to do this?
proc freq;
tables idno*fint*foodtype / out=countft;
run;

Answer 1

I am a little unsure of your data structure, but proc means can also count.
Assuming that you have multiple dates for each person, and multiple food types for each date, you can use:
data dataset;
set dataset;
count=1;
run;
proc means data=dataset sum;
class idno fint foodtype;
var count;
output out=countft sum=counftpday;
run;
/* Usually you only want the lines with the largest _type_, so keep going here */
proc sql noprint;
select max(_type_) into :want from countft;
quit; /*This grabs the max _type_ from output file */
data countft;
set countft;
where _type_=&want.;
run;

Answer 2

Try a proc sql:
proc sql;
create table want as
select distinct idno, fint, foodtype, count(*) as count
from have
order by 1, 2, 3;
quit;
Worse case scenario, sort and count in a data step.
proc sort data=have;
by idno fint foodtype;
run;
data count;
set have;
by idno fint foodtype;
if first.foodtype then count=1;
else count+1;
if last.foodtype then output;
run;