topic Re: informat in SAS Programming

informat

Ronein — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 05:32:06 GMT

Hello

I am creating a data set and enter data.

The data is

.001
0.01
10
100
10.0

My question is how can I know which informat should I use?

Re: informat

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 05:48:31 GMT

Maxim 1: Read the Documentation.

Go to documentation.sas.com, select "SAS 9.4 and SAS Viya 3.4 Programming Documentation", navigate to "Data Step Programming", "Formats and Informats", "SAS Informats", "Dictionary of Informats", select "Informats by Category". Scroll down to "Numeric".

Usually, you will use the simple w. informat (eg 7.) and see if that does it. If it doesn't, see if you find one that's applicable. It's granted that >90% of the information you'll read while browsing the documentation is not applicable at the moment, but most of it will end up in the back of your brain and come to the fore in a later moment when you'll need it.

Many times you will just have to swap the meaning of a dot and a comma (data from German-speaking countries), so you'll use the commax informat.

Re: informat

Astounding — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 07:42:44 GMT

You don't need to use any informats. SAS "understands" numbers, so you can simply use:

data want;
input x;
datalines;
.001
0.01
10
100
10.0
;

Re: informat

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 08:08:08 GMT

Yep. Forgot to mention that the w. informat is the default for numeric.