topic Re: Proc compare - decimal in SAS Programming

Proc compare - decimal

SireeshaKarthik — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 12:29:12 GMT

Hi, the results for a proc compare , some numeric values are showing extra three decimal points by default. How I can ignore the extra decimals

Re: Proc compare - decimal

Quentin — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 12:48:56 GMT

Can you add a little example of what you mean? Do you mean you have data where the only difference is in the third decimal place, like:

data a ;
  x=1.501 ;
run ;

data b ;
 x=1.502 ;
run ;

proc compare base=a compare=b ;
run ;

And you want PROC COMPARE to report that those two values are equal? If that's what you mean, look into the CRITERION option.

Re: Proc compare - decimal

SireeshaKarthik — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 12:54:54 GMT

Thanks for the quick response.

For example ×=200 , b=220

While comparing , it shows like below
X B diff
200.000 220.000 -20.000

How to ignore the last decimal points, need to see like below

X B diff
200 220 -20

Re: Proc compare - decimal

Quentin — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 13:10:22 GMT

You can add a FORMAT statement:

data a ;
  x=200 ;
run ;

data b ;
 x=220 ;
run ;

proc compare base=a compare=b ;
  format x 8. ;
run ;

That doesn't impact the comparison, but will show X formatted with no decimal places:

          ||       Base    Compare
      Obs ||          x          x      Diff.     % Diff
________  ||  _________  _________  _________  _________
          ||
       1  ||        200        220    20.0000    10.0000
_________________________________________________________

The difference still shows decimal places. If you don't want that, you might be able to edit a table template or something like that. I don't see a MAXDEC option or similar for PROC COMPARE.

Re: Proc compare - decimal

SireeshaKarthik — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 13:51:54 GMT

Yes. We can use maxdec for proc report, the variable has already format 8.

Re: Proc compare - decimal

Quentin — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 13:58:10 GMT

Apparently PROC COMPARE does not actually use a table template, so I'm not sure you can fully customize this.

See this paper by the great Jane Eslinger, which has a section on COMPARE

https://www.pharmasug.org/proceedings/2019/BP/PharmaSUG-2019-BP-039.pdf

Jane suggests for custom output from PROC COMPARE, you may want to output the results to a dataset, then use PROC REPORT or whatever to display they results.