topic Numbers stored as Char Variables & Their Magnitude in SAS Procedures

Numbers stored as Char Variables & Their Magnitude

apple — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 11:14:34 GMT

I have

'1', '2', '3',... stored as a Character variable - Types

If i want to subset a dataset

if Types <='10'

will it select all values from '1',....'10'?

In other words, does SAS interpret the magnitude of numbers stored as character variable in the same way as numeric variable?

Thank you

Re: Numbers stored as Char Variables & Their Magnitude

Patrick — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 12:29:06 GMT

No it doesn't. It compares character by character. You need to convert your characters to numeric for such a comparison.

23 data _null_;
24 types='2';
25 if types<='10' then put 'TRUE';
26 else put 'FALSE';
27 
28 if input(types,best32.)<=10 then put 'TRUE';
29 else put 'FALSE';
30 
31 run;

FALSE
TRUE