SAS syntax conventions

• Conventions
• Syntax Conventions
• UPPERCASE identifies SAS keywords such as the names of statements and
  procedures (for example, PROC GCHART). Also identifies
  arguments and values that are literals, (for example, NOLEGEND
  and LABEL=NONE).
• italic identifies arguments or values that you supply. Items in italic can
  represent user-supplied values that are either
• nonliteral values assigned to an argument (for example,
  axis-color in COLOR=axis-color)
• nonliteral arguments (for example, VBAR chart-variable. . . ; ).
  In addition, an item in italics can be the generic name for a list of
  arguments or parameters from which the user can choose (for
  example, appearance-options).
• < > (angle brackets)
  identify optional arguments. Any argument not enclosed in angle
  brackets is required.
• | (vertical bar) indicates that you can choose one value from a group. Values
  separated by bars are mutually exclusive.
• . . . (ellipsis) indicates that the argument following the ellipsis can be repeated
  any number of times (plot-request <. . . plot-request-n>, for
  example). If the ellipsis and the following argument are enclosed in
  angle brackets, they are optional. In SAS/GRAPH software, an
  ellipsis also indicates a range from which a value is selected
  (LINE=1 . . . 46, for example).
• () parentheses: used to indicate things to put instead of typing in literally