topic Re: Error in variable type in New SAS User

Error in variable type

archita — Sat, 05 Dec 2020 07:40:15 GMT

I have a dataset after merging two datasets ..having common varianle id , though I'd is numeric in both .. after running the merge statement , it is giving error saying variable defined as both character and numeric. I also used put function to convert the variable .. after that too giving the same results. How should I go about ?

Re: Error in variable type

Kurt_Bremser — Sat, 05 Dec 2020 08:19:56 GMT

The result of the PUT function is always character.

Please post your code and log.

Re: Error in variable type

ballardw — Sat, 05 Dec 2020 09:16:53 GMT

Just because values contain digits does not mean that your variable is numeric.

If you use Proc Import or one of the widgets to read an external file then decisions as to what type of variable are based on the content of a very few rows of data. If in one file there happens to be text such as "unknown" in the data column then you may end up with character variables.

Run Proc Contents on both of the data sets used on the merge. I bet you will find that one version of the variable is numeric and the other is character.

When you encounter errors and want to ask about them best practice is to copy the entire code of a procedure or data step with all the notes, warnings and errors from the LOG and paste into a code box opened on the forum with the </>. The code box is important to preserve formatting of the text to preserve the position of the diagnostic characters that SAS often places in the log.