topic Re: Variable validation in SAS Programming

Variable validation

Babloo — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 13:17:38 GMT

Assume I have a variable called "amount" and it has values like -15.59000, -1125.59000 etc and the format NLNUM18.5 has already been applied on that variable. Is there any way to verify that this variable is not displaying the values in exponential notation?

I find difficult to manually verify the values (it has over 10L unique values) for this variable.

Re: Variable validation

Satish_Parida — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 13:29:29 GMT

Print the Variable amount into a text file.

In printing into text file SAS prints the value as it is displayed format in the table.

Search for E in the file.

This had worked for me.

If you have some E then try rounding off the value to your desired decimal places.

Re: Variable validation

RW9 — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 13:53:51 GMT

Put the data into text, do a lengthn() function on it:

data test;
  length test $200;
  set have;
  test=put(nlnum,best.);
  check=lengthn(test);
  if check > 18;
run;

Note, as always, post test data in the form of a datastep, I cannot test the above code.

Re: Variable validation

andreas_lds — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 13:55:01 GMT

The function vvalue returns the formatted value of a variable. Maybe exporting the data can be skipped by using that function. Can't test it now, just an idea.