topic Re: Error when trying to convert to percent in New SAS User

Error when trying to convert to percent

marleeakerson — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 16:45:22 GMT

hello,

I am trying to do a simply conversion from decimal to percent (ex: .91 to 91%) so I am trying to multiply my variable by 100, but I keep getting these errors:

NOTE: Invalid numeric data, 'Percent_X' , at line 1343 column 28.
NOTE: Invalid numeric data, 'Percent_Y' , at line 1344 column 26.
NOTE: Invalid numeric data, 'Percent_Z' , at line 1345 column 16.

NOTE: Missing values were generated as a result of performing an operation on missing values.
Each place is given by: (Number of times) at (Line):(Column).
75 at 1343:54 75 at 1344:51 75 at 1345:30

What am I doing wrong?

here is my code:

data want;
set have;
Percent_X = "Percent_X" * 100 ;
Percent_Y = "Percent_Y" * 100;
Percent_Z = "Percent_Z" * 100;
run;

Thank you!

Re: Error when trying to convert to percent

novinosrin — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 16:48:01 GMT

Try removing the quotes around variable names if they are actually variable names

Alternatively, you could just FORMAT the values using percent. format like

format Percent_X  percent.;

Re: Error when trying to convert to percent

PaigeMiller — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 16:55:11 GMT

In your code, where you have

"Percent X"*100

the text inside the quotes is a character string which cannot be used in arithmetic.

You may want

percent_x=percent_x*100;

note that percent_x is a variable name, it is not in quotes, and it contains an underscore instead of a space as you originally wrote it, but this method does not append a % character after the number ... so ...

probably better is to leave the value unchanged, do not perform the above step, and instead apply the PERCENTw.d format to the variable percent_x, for example

format percent_x percent8.2;

which makes the value of the variable appear as if it had been multiplied by 100 and appends a % character after the number.