topic Re: Invalid Numeric data-SCAN/SUBSTR in SAS Programming

Invalid Numeric data-SCAN/SUBSTR

Kairali — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 15:09:00 GMT

Hello,

I am new to SAS Programming and using SAS 9.4. Can someone help me understand the below error and the logic?

I have Startdate (D) mentioned as in following pattern (partial dates)

01:unk:2010:12:null:null

I have run the attached code which displays a note

'Invalid numeric data ':' at line 141 column 21'

and

'Invalid third argument to function SUBSTR at line 141 column 9'.

Re: Invalid Numeric data-SCAN/SUBSTR

Reeza — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 15:17:39 GMT

Your error message:

'Invalid third argument to function SUBSTR at line 141 column 9'.

Your code @ line 141 is:

substr(D, 1, ':') = '01';

But the SUBSTR function uses a different format:

SUBSTR(variable, position <, length>)=characters-to-replace

I would suggest looking into TRANWRD instead of SUBSTR here which allows you a little more control of what replacing.

It should be:

substr(d, 1, 2) = '01'

For data validation for a field like this I'd break each component down into it's parts, evaluate it and then recombine them back into a date using DHMS or MDY() functions.

@Kairali wrote:

Hello,

I am new to SAS Programming and using SAS 9.4. Can someone help me understand the below error and the logic?

I have Startdate (D) mentioned as in following pattern (partial dates)

01:unk:2010:12:null:null

I have run the attached code which displays a note

'Invalid numeric data ':' at line 141 column 21'

and

'Invalid third argument to function SUBSTR at line 141 column 9'.

Re: Invalid Numeric data-SCAN/SUBSTR

ballardw — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 15:23:39 GMT

When you want to show us a log please copy the text from the log and then on the forum open a box using the </> icon and paste the text.

It is much easier to copy/paste code and highlight or make corrections to the code.

One of the invalid data type messages is showing "invalid numeric data :"

In the SUBSTR function if there is a third parameter it is the length of a string : Substr(var, 1,3) <= the 3 is the number of characters. So Substr(var,1,":") the colon is not a number, an expression returning a number or a string that could be converted to a number "3" would work though is poor practice.

Re: Invalid Numeric data-SCAN/SUBSTR

Kairali — Sat, 26 Sep 2020 14:14:55 GMT

Thank you! I had missed that.