topic Re: character to numeric in SAS Procedures

character to numeric

deleted_user — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:37:11 GMT

I have some data that I cannot clean appropriately. I have read in some data that contains single quotes in variables that I want as numeric. I have tried to create a new variable by multiplyingh the old variable by 1 and also using the input function of creating a new variable, but the new variable always has a missing value.

Below is the error I get.

NOTE: Invalid numeric data, '44,178.67' , at line 640 column 9

Re: character to numeric

deleted_user — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:43:13 GMT

Just use this:

B=INPUT(COMPRESS(A,'0123456789.','k'),8.);

where A is your dirty data and B will be your clean numerical one.

Ike Eisenhauer Message was edited by: WDEisenhauer

Re: character to numeric

deleted_user — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:59:24 GMT

This worked great. Thank you.

~ Max

Re: character to numeric

Bulgani — Tue, 19 May 2009 19:28:18 GMT

This is a superb solution to a problem I have. I wanted to keep any numeric values in a field but eliminate the characters. This was perfect for that situation.