What does the SORT procedure accomplish in SAS?

The SORT procedure in SAS is specifically designed to organize the observations in a dataset according to a specified order, which can be either ascending or descending based on the values of one or more variables. This sorting capability is critical when preparing data for analysis, as it allows for easier data retrieval and enhances the efficiency of certain operations that may require ordered data.

When you apply the SORT procedure, you can specify the variables by which you want to sort the data. For example, if you have a dataset of sales transactions and you want to see them listed chronologically, you would use the SORT procedure to arrange the observations based on the date variable. This organization helps in conducting analysis, reporting, and understanding trends within the data.

While summarizing data, printing, or creating new variables are important operations within SAS, they fall under different procedures and functionalities, such as the PRINT procedure or DATA step for summarization, thus clarifying why the correct answer specifically targets the sorting capability inherent to the SORT procedure.