title: SAS: How to calculate frequencies for all character variables in a dataset?
body: <p>I have a large SAS dataset which contain both numeric and character variables. I can use proc means to calculate descriptive statistics for numeric variables. For character variables, I want to know the unique values and their frequencies and missing values. I want to call all character variables at once and don't want to specify each one. </p>
  
  <p>How do I do this?</p>
  
  <p>For e.g the following datastep calls all numeric variables at once and calculate their summary statistics.</p>
  
  <pre><code>proc means data = dat1;
  var _numeric_;
  run;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I verified that the following doesn't work:</p>
  
  <pre><code>proc freq data = dat1;
  tables _character_;
  run;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>