topic String to numeric lopping off last 2 digits in SAS Programming

String to numeric lopping off last 2 digits

gsnidow — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 21:04:22 GMT

Greetings all. I've got some string data that are numbers left padded with zeros. In the source DB2 table they are decimal(10,0), but I am getting them from an Oracle database that includes text in the same column, and all the numeric data are zero padded to 10 characters long. I though I could simply use input, but that is lopping off the right 2 characters. This is what I am trying...

data _null_ ;

string = '0123456789' ;

num = input(string,8.) ;

put num ;

run ; quit ;

I would expect the value of num to be 123456789, but it is ending up being 1234567. I'm not sure why this is not working. Any ideas? Thank you.

Greg

Re: String to numeric lopping off last 2 digits

gsnidow — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 21:12:20 GMT

DOH! I was thinking that 8. would allow for the greatest number possible, but 10. works.

Re: String to numeric lopping off last 2 digits

ballardw — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 21:32:40 GMT

Don't forget to count the decimal point when reading decimal values as well.

Reading 1234.567 with 7.3 will also disappoint. (Hint: 1234.56 is 7 characters).

Re: String to numeric lopping off last 2 digits

gsnidow — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 21:36:47 GMT

So if I'm getting this right, for a 10 digit number, I need to use a numeric variable with length 6., but in the input statement I need to use 10 to specify the number of characters?

Re: String to numeric lopping off last 2 digits

data_null__ — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 21:48:20 GMT

I would not bother to make ANY numeric variable length LT 8. The W for an INFORMAT should be GE the longest string of digit characters, signs, decimals, commas and dollar signs being read.