title: What's the easiest way to get SAS to do this?
body: <p>I have a dataset that looks like this but with many, many more variable pairs:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Stuff2016   Stuff2008   Earth2016  Earth2008    Fire2016  Fire2008
     123456     5646743          45        456         456    890101
     541351   543534534          45        489         489     74456
     352352      564889          98     489489        1231       189
     464646   542235423          13      15615        1561        78
     987654     4561889          44       1212       12121       111
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>For each pair of almost identically named variables,
  I want SAS to subtract 2016 data - 2008 data without typing the variable names.  </p>
  
  <p>What's the easiest way to tell SAS to do this without having to specifically type the variable names? Is there a way to tell it to subtract every other variable minus the one that precedes it without mentioning the specific variable names? </p>
  
  <p>Thanks a lot!!!!</p>