topic Re: How to replace a character value with a range of numeric values? in New SAS User

How to replace a character value with a range of numeric values?

Bumble_15 — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 18:25:41 GMT

Hello,

This may be a silly question, but I have a dataset with a variable "age" that is continuous, but contains "<1". I am looking to replace the "<1" with a range of numeric values (0.3-0.7).

I'm not sure of the best way to go about this; my initial thought was multiple imputation (proc MI), but I think there must also be another (simpler) way.

Thank you!

Re: How to replace a character value with a range of numeric values?

SAS_Cares — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 22:49:27 GMT

See if these solutions help:

https://support.sas.com/kb/24/590.html or https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Data-Science/variable-type-change-from-Character-to-numeric/td-p/609724

Re: How to replace a character value with a range of numeric values?

PaigeMiller — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 00:09:10 GMT

According to PROC CONTENTS, is this variable that is named AGE, numeric or character? The only acceptable answer is from PROC CONTENTS. Show us the PROC CONTENTS output.

Re: How to replace a character value with a range of numeric values?

Tom — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 03:24:46 GMT

@Bumble_15 wrote:

Hello,

This may be a silly question, but I have a dataset with a variable "age" that is continuous, but contains "<1". I am looking to replace the "<1" with a range of numeric values (0.3-0.7).

I'm not sure of the best way to go about this; my initial thought was multiple imputation (proc MI), but I think there must also be another (simpler) way.

Thank you!

You seem confused about what you have. If the value has a < in it then it is NOT a number. It is a character string. If the new value has a hyphen in it then it is also not a number.

So you want to replace the string '<1' with the string '0.3-0.7'.

As long as AGE is defined long enough to hold that longer string it should be easy.

data want;
  set have;
  if age='<1' then age='0.3-0.7';
run;