topic Preserve Trailing zeros while converting from Character To Numeric in SAS Programming

Preserve Trailing zeros while converting from Character To Numeric

draroda — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 07:43:31 GMT

Hi All,

Need your help on below data to preserve trailing zeros while conversion from character to Numeric.

Please suggest if there is any possibility.I need final variable in best. numeric format.

data x;
 input test $ 1-8;
 datalines;
 10000
 10.305
 0.140
 0.1305
 ;
 
 data xx;
  set x;
  try=input(test,best.);
  run;
  proc print data=xx;run;

Re: Preserve Trailing zeros while converting from Character To Numeric

Kurt_Bremser — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 08:02:24 GMT

The number of displayed trailing zeros will be determined by the format you use. eg 12.4 will always display 4 fractional digits, regardless of numeric content.

1.0000
2.1234
3.1200

etc

Re: Preserve Trailing zeros while converting from Character To Numeric

RW9 — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 08:43:12 GMT

Numbers do not have trailing, or leading zeroes by default. 0.140 is exactly the same as 0.14, but fewer display characters. Hence your use of best is correct. If for some reason you need to keep the values exactly as given then you would either need to:

a) fix number of decimals for every value

b) stick with character, maybe have a secondary numeric version

The second is always my preferred option, and in my industry pretty standard. Keep the text for display - has however many extra bits and can be different for each item, and a numeric version for processing.