topic Re: changing numeric to character in SAS Programming

changing numeric to character

dolbi18 — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 12:26:02 GMT

Hi, i have to change the type of variable from numeric to character. I've tried several ways, but i always get an error or warning 😞

Variable "x3" is in BEST8. format and SAS uses numeric format, but i need x3 variable to be in character format.

Dear communities, how to do it :D?

PeterClemmensen — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 12:32:21 GMT

You can not change the type of a variable once it is created. But you can convert a variable and assign it to a new variable like this

data test;
	format x3 best8.;
	x3=100.56;
	x3_char=put(x3, best8.);
run;

proc contents data=test;
run;

dolbi18 — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 12:34:35 GMT

Thanks 🙂

PeterClemmensen — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 12:35:07 GMT

Anytime, glad to help 🙂