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 Sysmis & Arithmetical operations

Patrick Fisher's profile image
Patrick Fisher posted Thu February 19, 2026 01:47 PM

Good afternoon experts,

I have a series of variables, some of which have data and some are sysmis. I need to get the total of those variables added together in a new variable. The data in these variables is 0,1, or sysmis (the default period).

Compute Wins = (winloss1 + winloss2 + winloss3 + winloss4 + winloss5 + winloss6 + winloss7 + winloss8 + winloss9 + winloss10 + winloss11 + winloss12 + winloss13 + winloss14 + winloss15).

This statement works without errors but returns sysmis values only (the default period).

I have tried a shortened version including only five of the variables. That returns the correct answers as long as there is no sysmis (.) in any variable.

What am I doing wrong?

As logical and analytical as I am, I simply do not understand how to use the sysmis command.

Thank you for your help,

Patrick

Jon Peck's profile image
Jon Peck IBM Champion posted Thu February 19, 2026 02:15 PM

The logic of SYSMIS is that it represents unknown or undefined values, so, logically, a sum of variables that includes any sysmis values must be missing.

But the sum function gets around this problem

From the syntax reference ...

SUM(numexpr,numexpr[,..]). Numeric. Returns the sum of its arguments that have valid, nonmissing
values. This function requires two or more arguments, which must be numeric. You can specify a
minimum number of valid arguments for this function to be evaluated.

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