topic Re: Just started to learn SAS, but need some help. in SAS Programming

Just started to learn SAS, but need some help.

PRP — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:53:08 GMT

Hi:
I'm starting of with a simple program to read in data and calculate the mean. I have two columns of data (numbers), but SAS says that column 1 is text and column 2 is numerical. Column 1 does have a negative number in there, and I'm wondering if the '-' is letting SAS think that it's a text and not numeric. How can I change the format?

Re: Just started to learn SAS, but need some help.

sbb — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:22:50 GMT

Share your SAS code.

Scott Barry
SBBWorks, Inc.

Re: Just started to learn SAS, but need some help.

abdullala — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:36:38 GMT

it must be that your column 1 was defined as char, not likely only because of the negative sign. use a new variable to transform it to numeric:
column3=input(column1, best.)

Re: Just started to learn SAS, but need some help.

Doc_Duke — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:54:16 GMT

There are lots of reasons you could get that error. For instance, it will occur if there is a space between the "-" and the digits when you are using free format input or the import wizard. As Scott said, share your code and log.