topic Re: Converting numeric to character in New SAS User

Converting numeric to character

GS2 — Fri, 27 Dec 2019 16:53:52 GMT

Using SAS 9.4

I am having trouble converting numeric data into character data. I am using the following code:

data want;
set have;
med2_dose = input(med2_dose, 6.);
run;

The data are purely numbers (ie 1, 20, 25, 100, 250, etc.)

Whenever I run this code all of the numeric data is lost in the new variable but it is converted to character. Does anyone know how to correct this? Thank you

Re: Converting numeric to character

PaigeMiller — Fri, 27 Dec 2019 16:57:55 GMT

Converting numeric to character uses the PUT function, not the INPUT function. You also have to name the resulting character variables something different than the original numeric variable.

Why on earth would you want dose to be character and not numeric?

Re: Converting numeric to character

GS2 — Fri, 27 Dec 2019 17:01:51 GMT

I am combining 2 data sets and I need the variables to be the same (character or numeric) in order to stack the data sets together. However, in one of the data sets dose is a character because of the way the data was enter 10/325 for example.

Re: Converting numeric to character

novinosrin — Fri, 27 Dec 2019 17:02:12 GMT

Hi @GS2

data want;
set have;
med2_dose_char = put(med2_dose, 6.);
run;

Re: Converting numeric to character

PaigeMiller — Fri, 27 Dec 2019 20:11:30 GMT

@GS2 wrote:

I am combining 2 data sets and I need the variables to be the same (character or numeric) in order to stack the data sets together. However, in one of the data sets dose is a character because of the way the data was enter 10/325 for example.

Had I known that, I would have provided a different solution. Convert the character variable to be numeric. Then "combining" the two data sets will be possible, and dose will have the usefulness that you can analyze it as a number.