topic Re: Formatting missing values causing cut-offs in SAS Programming

Formatting missing values causing cut-offs

lydiawawa — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 16:38:59 GMT

Hi All,

I have a dataset with a variable contains missing values, and I tried to format missing values in a separate sas file by using proc format:

proc format;
   value $idname '0', ., '-' ='missing';
run;

The variable in the original dataset looks like this (note: idname is formatted as string not numerical) :

idname

12367123456

12349823456

12738446324

12738495246

12734937432

12344837765

After formatting it becomes:

idname

1236712

1234982

1273844

1273849

1273493

1234483

It seems the word 'missing' caused the cut off to carry over only the first 7 characters after formatting. Does anyone know how to resolve the issue?

Thank you!

Re: Formatting missing values causing cut-offs

Astounding — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 16:38:44 GMT

It looks like the format is truncating what prints. It won't truncate the actual value. Try specifying a width when applying the format:

format varname $idname11.;

Re: Formatting missing values causing cut-offs

Haikuo — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 16:55:14 GMT

So you only worry about the truncating, not the format is NOT working 🙂

proc format;
   value $idname '0',' ' , '-' ='missing';
run;

data test;
infile cards truncover;
input id $20.;
format id $idname20.;

cards;
12367123456
12349823456
12738446324
12738495246
12734937432
.
.
.
12344837765
0
0
12344837765
;

give it enough length, it will show.

Re: Formatting missing values causing cut-offs

ballardw — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 17:37:15 GMT

Formats all have a default width or number of characters that display.

If you note that your "truncated" values all happen to have the exact same number of characters as the word "missing" from the format you might realize that the default length for that format is 7 characters because that is the only value it displays. You can either specify an explicit default length in the format definition or try applying the format with a specific width such as :format variable $idname11.;