topic Converting Character to Numeric Variable in an IF/THEN statement in New SAS User

Converting Character to Numeric Variable in an IF/THEN statement

ssills24 — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 00:06:42 GMT

Hello,

I am attempting to convert this character variable called PriorWeight to a numeric variable called PriorWeight2. I have a range of weight for 292 observations, and am not sure how to include those within the If/Then statements. The range of weights include numbers from 87 to 319, with the last 4 observations having a ? as their PriorWeight, which is why I included the ELSE PriorWeight2 = .;

Here is my code:

/* Convert PriorWeight to a numeric variable */
IF PriorWeight = 87 - 319 THEN PriorWeight2 = INPUT(PriorWeight,3.);
ELSE PriorWeight2 = . ;
RUN;

I have also already tried (87:319), '87' - '319'.

Please let me know what you think!

Re: Converting Character to Numeric Variable in an IF/THEN statement

SASKiwi — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 00:26:52 GMT

Try this:

IF 87 <= PriorWeight <= 319 THEN PriorWeight2 = INPUT(PriorWeight,3.);
ELSE PriorWeight2 = . ;

Re: Converting Character to Numeric Variable in an IF/THEN statement

jimbarbour — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 00:42:55 GMT

Naturally, I like @SASKiwi's solution, above, but as a practical matter, you could just code:

PriorWeight2 = INPUT(PriorWeight,3.)

If PriorWeight is not numeric, then PriorWeight2 will also be non-numeric. The problem with the above code is that it will generate messages in the log. A clean log is the best practice, so definitely use @SASKiwi's solution, but I think it's good to understand what SAS is going to do if it tries a numeric operation on non-numeric data.

Jim

Re: Converting Character to Numeric Variable in an IF/THEN statement

SASKiwi — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 19:08:40 GMT

@jimbarbour - This variation of your solution will avoid log messages and would be the approach I would normally take:

PriorWeight2 = INPUT(PriorWeight,?? 3.);

Re: Converting Character to Numeric Variable in an IF/THEN statement

jimbarbour — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 19:11:04 GMT

Ah! Excellent. Thank you for that @SASKiwi. I've used ?? in INPUT statements, but I've not tried it in an INPUT function. That's really nice -- so compact.

Jim