topic creating numeric variable in SAS Programming

creating numeric variable

india2016 — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 08:02:17 GMT

Hello All,

I am trying to create a numeric variable which has value "657253982556657625876" after creating this variable the output I got is wrong i.e. "657253982556657680384".

My program is :

data abc;
format id best32.;
input id;
datalines;
657253982556657625876
;

run;

Re: creating numeric variable

jklaverstijn — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 08:49:32 GMT

Your number exceeds what SAS can store numerically in 8 bytes. Have a look at the on-line documentation to see what the limits are for your operating system. If you are running Windows your maximum integer value is 9,007,199,254,740,992. You can see your number exceeds this. The article I refer to contains some pointers on how to deal with t his. Basically it comes down to the choice between magnitude and precision.

Hope this helps,

-- Jan

Re: creating numeric variable

jklaverstijn — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 08:52:14 GMT

Looking at your code I see the variable is named ID. This suggests that the number is used for identification and no arithmetic will be performed on it. I suggest you store the variable as a character variable to avoid numerical errors of the sort you are experiencing.

Hope this helps,

-- Jan