What is the result when the following SAS program is run: PROC PRINT DATA=employees; WHERE name ? E; RUN?

The correct answer reflects the behavior of the PROC PRINT step in SAS when using the WHERE statement with the condition specified. In the given WHERE clause, "name ? E" is utilizing a SAS operator that functions somewhat like a pattern matching criterion. However, this specific syntax is not valid for filtering based on whether the name starts with the letter 'E'.

In SAS, the comparison operator '?' is used for pattern-matching based searches with character strings but is not appropriate in this context for the intent shown in the question. Since no valid condition is met with the given statement, the result becomes that no observations from the dataset are selected based on the WHERE condition. This leads to the outcome of no observations being written to the report.

The alternatives depicting specific observations being printed imply a valid selection of those names based on the pattern match. However, since the WHERE clause does not function correctly, it results in zero rows being output, making the assertion about specific observations incorrect. Thus, the interpretation of the WHERE clause leads to the conclusion that no observations are available to deliver as results.