/*** Tip00401 ***/
Maybe I'm missing something, but I am looking for some kind of reverse PROC CONTENTS. 
I read ascii data and don't want to enter the metadata (variable labels and many other 
attributes) by hand by writing a piece of data step code. The information is avaliable 
in another ascii file, which I would like to read using the standardized variable names 
from PROC CONTENTS (into a dataset) and feed back to a (still empty) dataset, just like 
the CNTLIN option with PROC FORMAT allows for importing formats from a dataset. If that 
is not possible I would could read the metadata to generate normal data step code to 
%include, but that is more work.

Author of Solution: Ian_Whitlock!!@!!comcast.net
The code needed to do what you want depends on what you want, and the structure
of the metadata.  Here is a simple example.

data dict ;
   input var $ lab $ ;
cards ;
var1 lab1
x xxx
;

data w ;
  x = 1 ;
  var1 = "abc" ;
run ;

proc sql ;
   select var || "=" || quote(lab) into :Lablist separated by " "
     from dict ;
quit ;

proc datasets lib = work ;
   modify w ;
      label &lablist ;
   run ;
quit ;

/*** end of tip 00401 ***/