topic Re: Prevent input to trim values in New SAS User

Prevent input to trim values

NewUsrStat — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 09:07:59 GMT

Hi guys,

I'm trying to convert a character variable to numeric.

The variable represents IDs (i.e., anonymized patients) I received from an hospital.

While converting to numeric, the last value is trimmed. For example: 800501185 becomes 80050118. Is there a way to prevent the trimming?

Here the code I'm using:

data myDATA;
  set myDATA;
  numeric_var = input(Patients, 8.);
  put numeric_var=;
run;

Original variable "Patients": Char $11.

Thank you in advance

Re: Prevent input to trim values

yabwon — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 09:31:26 GMT

data myDATA;
  Patients='800501185';
  numeric_var = input(Patients, best32.);
  put numeric_var=;
run;

Re: Prevent input to trim values

Kurt_Bremser — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 09:35:43 GMT

DON'T.

Patient ID's are codes, not numbers, and should always be stored as character. You will never do calculations with them, but numeric might lead to imprecisions or loss of information (like leading zeroes).

Re: Prevent input to trim values

Astounding — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 11:30:36 GMT

Technically, your program instructs SAS to read 8 characters:

numeric_var = input(Patients, 8.);

That's what "8." means: read 8 characters. If you want SAS to read a different number of characters, that's the statement to change, perhaps to one of.

numeric_var = input(Patients, 9.);
numeric_var = input(Patients, 11.);

The solution from @yabwon will work. But technically, "best32." is a format, not an informat. So SAS just changes "best32." automatically to be "32." and gets the proper result.