topic Re: Character values have been converted to numeric values at the places given by: (Line):(Column). in SAS Programming

Character values have been converted to numeric values at the places given by: (Line):(Column).

LL5 — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 15:31:04 GMT

Hi, I try to create three new indicator columns. These indicators are character filed. When I run my code, I got the below message. It seems SAS converted these fields to numeric value. What should I do?

Thanks

NOTE: Character values have been converted to numeric values at the places given by: (Line):(Column).

21:22 22:28

NOTE: Invalid numeric data, 'Y' , at line 22 column 36.

DATA TEST;

SET ABC;

ARRAY OLD (3) INDICATOR1 INDICATOR2 INDICATOR3;

ARRAY NEW (3) INDICATOR1_NEW INDICATOR2_NEW INDICATOR3_NEW;

DO I = 1 TO 3;

IF OLD(I) = "N" THEN NEW(I)= " ";

ELSE IF OLD(I) NE "N" THEN NEW(I) =OLD(I);

END;

DROP I;

RUN;

Re: Character values have been converted to numeric values at the places given by: (Line):(Column).

ballardw — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 15:47:28 GMT

When you created the array New the variables by default were created as numeric if they did not exist in the data set ABC.

ARRAY NEW (3) $1 INDICATOR1_NEW INDICATOR2_NEW INDICATOR3_NEW;

would create character variables of length 1. if you need longer than increase the 1 to the needed length.

Re: Character values have been converted to numeric values at the places given by: (Line):(Column).

LL5 — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 16:21:41 GMT

Thanks Ballardw. It works now!

What happen if INDICATOR1_NEW has one character, where INDICATOR2_NEW and INDICATOR3_NEW have two characters?

Re: Character values have been converted to numeric values at the places given by: (Line):(Column).

ballardw — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 17:24:38 GMT

It would probably be easiest just to assign them all the same max length of $2. If the actual length becomes an issue you can specify a Length statment for the new variables before putting them in the Array definition such as

Length INDICATOR1_NEW $ 1 INDICATOR2_NEW INDICATOR3_NEW $ 2;

BTW I would recommend using New_Indicator1, New_Indicator2 etc. For a number of reasons. It is easy to specify variable lists such as New_I: to get all variables that start with New_I for almost anything that accepts a list of variable names.

For instance your array definition could be

Array new (3) $2 New_Indicator1 - New_Indicator3;

Which when you get to a project with 25, 50 or more variables makes things a whole lot easier to change that 3 to 25 and be done instead of typing in all 25 variable names.

Re: Character values have been converted to numeric values at the places given by: (Line):(Column).

LL5 — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 21:25:15 GMT

Great. Thanks. This is very helpful.