topic Character Data vs Numeric in SAS Procedures

Character Data vs Numeric

jjwagner — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:13:02 GMT

How do you convert character data to numeric?

Character Data vs Numeric

art297 — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:28:57 GMT

data have;

input have $;

cards;

333

;

data want;

set have;

want=input(have,best12.);

run;

Character Data vs Numeric

jjwagner — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 22:18:03 GMT

I think I understand. What does "best12." refer to? It looks like I need to insert the $ symbol immediately after the charcter in the input statement.

Character Data vs Numeric

art297 — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 22:30:39 GMT

Best12. is simply a SAS numeric format. The only place the $ was relevant was in reading the original values as characters. Thus, in the example, have already is in character format and that was only used to create an example file.

In datastep want, the numeric variable want was created by re-inputting the variable have by converting it with the input function.

Character Data vs Numeric

jjwagner — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 22:58:58 GMT

Thanks for the help.