topic Changing CHAR to NUM without scientific format in SAS Programming

Changing CHAR to NUM without scientific format

Symun23 — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 10:25:29 GMT

Hello,

I have a CHAR column that has numbers in them 13 digits in length, I want to convert these to numeric but when I try to do this using INPUT I get a numeric column displaying the scientific format. I don't want this how do I go about stopping this?

This is what I am currently using,

PROC SQL;
CREATE TABLE WORK.ACCOUNT_NUMERIC as
SELECT *, INPUT (ACCOUNT, 16.) AS NUMERIC_ACCOUNT

What am i doing wrong?

Re: Changing CHAR to NUM without scientific format

Ksharp — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 10:48:17 GMT

INPUT (ACCOUNT, best32.)

Re: Changing CHAR to NUM without scientific format

Symun23 — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 10:55:58 GMT

Nope that didn't work.

Account Account_Numeric

1100001866320 1.1000019E12
1100002875975 1.1000029E12
1100004528978 1.1000045E12
1100009131297 1.1000091E12

This is a sample of the results I am getting

Re: Changing CHAR to NUM without scientific format

s_lassen — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 11:12:28 GMT

The problem is not the informat, but the format. If you give the number the format you want, that should solve it, e.g.

PROC SQL;
CREATE TABLE WORK.ACCOUNT_NUMERIC as
SELECT *, INPUT (ACCOUNT, 16.) format=16.0 AS NUMERIC_ACCOUNT

Re: Changing CHAR to NUM without scientific format

Symun23 — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 11:41:58 GMT

Thanks s_lassen, worked a treat

Re: Changing CHAR to NUM without scientific format

ballardw — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 15:17:13 GMT

@Symun23 wrote:

Nope that didn't work.

Account Account_Numeric

1100001866320 1.1000019E12
1100002875975 1.1000029E12
1100004528978 1.1000045E12
1100009131297 1.1000091E12

This is a sample of the results I am getting

If you don't do arithmetic with something it likely should not be numeric: postal codes, phone numbers, account numbers, product numbers, and patient identifiers for example. Then the issue should not have occurred at all.