topic Re: formats error in SAS Procedures

formats error

robertrao — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 18:48:55 GMT

Hi,

I was trying to apply formats on a charecter variable and it gives a WARNING:

"VARIBALE HAS ALREADY BEEN DEFINED NUMERIC"????

I used like below

description=put(code,$format.);

Could you suggest me where i went wrong????

Re: formats error

art297 — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 19:00:23 GMT

I would guess that you are trying to apply a character format to a numeric variable. Possibly the following examples will help:

proc format;

value $charformat

'1'='yes'

'2'='no';

value numformat

1='yes'

2='no';

run;

data test;

input charcode $ numcode;

chardescription=put(charcode,$charformat.);

numdescription=put(numcode,numformat.);

cards;

1 1

2 2

;

Re: formats error

robertrao — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 19:13:51 GMT

Hi Art,

Thanks for the reply.. Thats a charecter variable

Re: formats error

Reeza — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 19:17:53 GMT

Do you have a variable called description already in the dataset?

Re: formats error

Tom — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 22:19:56 GMT

Your variable CODE is numeric and you are trying apply a character format (notice the leading dollar sign) to it.

229 proc format;

229 ! value $format '8'='eight';

NOTE: Format $FORMAT has been output.

229 ! run;

230 data x;

231 code=8 ;

232 description=put(code,$format.);

--------

484

WARNING: Variable code has already been defined as numeric.

NOTE 484-185: Format FORMAT was not found or could not be loaded.

233 run;