topic Re: converting numeric values to character and not losing the decimals in SAS Programming

converting numeric values to character and not losing the decimals

ilikesas — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 02:19:44 GMT

Hi,

I have a variable estimate with value = 14.793 and it is in numeric format 12.3 . I would like to convert it to character format and do the following:

estimate = put(estimate,$12.);

But the result that I get is 15.000, and the format is still 12.3. ?

Thank you!

Re: converting numeric values to character and not losing the decimals

SASKiwi — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 02:27:04 GMT

estimate = put(estimate,12.3);

Re: converting numeric values to character and not losing the decimals

ilikesas — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 02:33:16 GMT

Wow, it works!!!

Its just that I was expecting the $ sign since I wanted to convert to character, but I guess that is some SAS peculiarity.

Thank a lot!

Re: converting numeric values to character and not losing the decimals

ChrisNZ — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 02:53:34 GMT

$ is for formatting character variables. You format a numeric here.

Re: converting numeric values to character and not losing the decimals

ballardw — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 14:21:32 GMT

PUT creates character variables any time you use x= put (...) or x=Putn(...) or x=putc(...).

The format involved in the PUT portion controls what the resulting character varaible may look like. The format should match the variable type you are PUTting.

SAS will occasionaly help you by doing implicit conversion if you specify a numeric format for something that is character but looks numeric or specify a numeric variable and a character format though the results may not match what you expect.

Here is a brief example:

data junk;
   x= 25.4;
   y = put(x,$7.);
run;

Note that there is no Error but a warning is placed in the log and that the value of Y may not be as expected and has leading blanks.