topic formatting disappears after concatenating in SAS Programming

formatting disappears after concatenating

K_S — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 17:35:46 GMT

I used catx to concatenate a few formatted variables, but after concatenating, the formats disappeared.

Any way to keep the formats when concatenating?

PaigeMiller — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 17:53:00 GMT

CATX ( and all of the CAT... functions) work on the unformatted values of the variables.

If you want to maintain the formatting, you would have to use the proper PUT function

Example

catx('-',put(date,yymmdd10.), put(time,time8.),put(dollars,dollar18.2))

Tom — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 18:09:30 GMT

Use PUT() or VVALUE() function calls instead of just the raw variable names.

long_string=cats(var1,vvalue(var2),put(var3,yymmdd10.));