topic Re: Variable in both Numeric and Character in SAS Data Science

Variable in both Numeric and Character

mlogan — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 19:04:26 GMT

Hi All,

Can I put both and Character and Numeric under the same variable and assign the variable type as Numeric? I wanted to merge these two table with set command and it says Table 1 code is Numeric and Table 2 Code is Character.

Table 1:

Code

Table 2:

Code	Name
1	John
5	Clara
B	Mike
4	Dave
A	Laura

Can I merge them like this with a set command so that all codes come?

Code	Name
1
2
3
4
5
1	John
5	Clara
B	Mike
4	Dave
A	Laura

Re: Variable in both Numeric and Character

M_Maldonado — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 19:10:11 GMT

probably not.

create a dummy variable in table 1 to make it character before merging it to table 2.

good luck!

Re: Variable in both Numeric and Character

Kurt_Bremser — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 07:14:17 GMT

No. A variable defined as numeric can only hold numerical values.

Re: Variable in both Numeric and Character

RW9 — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 09:09:03 GMT

As has been mentioned above structurally you can only have a column which is of character or numeric. You can however do this in one step:

data tab1;

input code;

datalines;

;

run;

data tab2;

input code $ name $;

datalines;

1 John

5 Clara

B Mike

4 Dave

A Laura

;

run;

proc sql;

create table WANT as

select put(CODE,1.) as CODE,

"" as NAME

from TAB1

union all

select *

from TAB2;

quit;