Review These Ideas (we've covered them before)

1. Use a Length statement to specify how many bytes are used to store a variable. Use as many bytes as the longest character value for a character variable. Use 3-8 bytes for storing integers, depending on how large the integers will be. Use 8 bytes to store decimal numbers (to take advantage of maximum precision).
2. Use IF-THEN/ELSE structures instead of multiple IF statements.
3. Arrange the IF statements - in an IF-THEN/ELSE structure - so that the more likely conditions are encountered first.
4. If your data step is only used to produce output with PUT statements - and no data set needs to be created - then use DATA _NULL_ .