topic Re: Keeping Decimal Places in SAS Programming

Keeping Decimal Places

danfavero — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 21:17:53 GMT

Hello Everyone,

I have the following value in a variable '0.1234567890123456'. I need to create a numeric variable to keep exactly the same number as the text and tried a variety of formats. However, the closest I got was a numeric field with the number 0.12345678901234 (14 decimal places instead of 16)

Any hint to keep all 16?

Thanks!

Re: Keeping Decimal Places

Reeza — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 21:25:08 GMT

http://documentation.sas.com/?docsetId=lrcon&docsetTarget=p0ji1unv6thm0dn1gp4t01a1u0g6.htm&docsetVersion=9.4&locale=en

How did you import the data? It may be better to do it in the import stage than after the fact, since SAS isn't likely storing the numbers with 16 decimal places correctly in the first place.

Re: Keeping Decimal Places

danfavero — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 21:59:33 GMT

I am importing as text exactly to keep all the 16 decimal places '0.1234567890123456'. However, when I create a numeric variable converting the text to numeric, I only can keep 14 decimal places 0.12345678901234.

I would like to confirm whether SAS has such a limitation or I can find any numeric format to keep all the 16 decimal places.

Thanks

Re: Keeping Decimal Places

Reeza — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 22:31:53 GMT

SAS has this limitation. Please see the link in my first response.

Re: Keeping Decimal Places

SASKiwi — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 00:29:09 GMT

Curious to know why you need 16 decimal places in the first place?

Re: Keeping Decimal Places

Tom — Sun, 04 Mar 2018 18:07:24 GMT

If you need to store more digits than SAS can represent exactly using floating point numbers then you need to store them as character strings.

What type of arithmetic are you doing on these values? Why do you think that the 16th least significant digit has any added value?