topic Re: Length of numeric variable in SAS Programming

Length of numeric variable

prakashpk — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 15:11:45 GMT

I have numeric variable with decimals

data l;
input number;
cards;
54498.014
17188.12647
54545
211151.127287128718
run;

need to see the length of numeric variable in SAS SQL commond without put commond or with commond along with suppressing addional zeros.

Can any one help me to code this in SAS SQL please?

Number Length
54498.014 9
17188.12647 11
54545 5
211151.127312345 16

123456789012345678.1 20

Re: Length of numeric variable

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 15:44:11 GMT

At least your last example won't work, as SAS numeric values have a precision of ~15 digits.

Google "SAS numeric precision" for in-depth information.

Otherwise, you can only determine the length from strings, and therefore will need the put() function.

Re: Length of numeric variable

Rwon — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 16:04:06 GMT

Adding to Kurt,

You can read in the data as a character variable and just use the length function in the data step.

data l;
input number $50.;
number_length = length(number);
cards;
54498.014
17188.12647
54545
211151.127287128718
123456789012345678.1
;
run;

Re: Length of numeric variable

prakashpk — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 07:53:20 GMT

Thank you Rwon for your reply 🙂

Actually i know how to write in Data step, but i want to understand how it is written in SAS SQL format as i have data which comes from the server and need to see one of the attribute length, whether it is exceeding 19 which includes . and decimals. or number contains more than 6 decimal numbers. can you please send me SAS SQL code which i can use for this case.

Regards,

Prakash

Re: Length of numeric variable

Kurt_Bremser — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 08:03:20 GMT

I guess that by "server" you mean a database system? In that case, you have a problem, as 19 digits go beyond the maximum precision available to SAS (~15 digits, as already mentioned), and numbers like that will not be correctly represented in SAS anyway.

I suggest you do a typecast in the database (SQL pass-through), and import into SAS as strings (character).

Or you have the table exported to a flat file from the DBMS, and then read the column as character with a SAS data step.

Re: Length of numeric variable

ChrisBrooks — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 09:53:52 GMT

Adding to Kurt

If you need greater precision you might try using SAS DS2 - references here and here

Re: Length of numeric variable

ChrisNZ — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 10:05:26 GMT

The closest you'll get using proc sql is:

select length(NUMBER,best32. -l) from HAVE;

but that's a weird request, and you'll get surprises due to numeric precision as explained above.