topic Re: Issue in converting a integer value to string for below program in SAS Programming

Issue in converting a integer value to string for below program

Anu123 — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 11:37:04 GMT

Hi All,

Trying to convert the c=12345678912345.61 value to string by using put function but is not working as expected.
It looks SAS is having limitations in converting big numbers.
Is it possible to convert integer values( more than 17 digits) to string ?

data _null_;
c=12345678912345.61;
b=put(c,best32.2);
put b;
run;

Output :- 12345678912345.6

Re: Issue in converting a integer value to string for below program

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 11:49:19 GMT

Because of the way SAS (and other software that uses 64-bit technology, like Excel) stores numbers (see here), numbers beyond 16 decimal digits will not be handled correctly.

For statistical analysis, such precision is not needed anyway.

Re: Issue in converting a integer value to string for below program

Anu123 — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 12:17:26 GMT

Thank you for your answer,

Can you please let me know how to handle amounts more than 16 digits than in SAS ?

Re: Issue in converting a integer value to string for below program

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 12:35:37 GMT

You can use much larger numbers (be cause of the exponent) in calculations, but not with precision beyond the 16th digit.