topic SAS let statement defines the variable as character or numeric in SAS Data Science

SAS let statement defines the variable as character or numeric

eagles_dare13 — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 18:00:03 GMT

When I write:

%let x = 0.32;

How can I make sure that x is initialized as a numeric variable and not a character variable? I want to be able to do numerical operations on x.

jakarman — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 18:08:02 GMT

macro variables are always text based as the goal is modify the sas source code.

In normal situations numerical calculations are exceptional in a sas macro as they are processed within a sas-datastep.

Are you sure you are not mixing up some goals of the several different coding languages within a SAS environment?

ballardw — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 18:52:41 GMT

You can perform numerical calcuations to create additional MACRO variable values using the %sysfunc or %eval<integers only> or %sysevalf.

%let x = 0.32;

%let y = %sysevalf(&x * 6.2);

%let z = %sysfunc( max(&x,&y,23));

%put y= &y z= &z;

If the idea is to do numeric operations in a data step then your X variable would be treated and used as a constant value.