change format for data

[septemberbulb]

APPLICATION	NEW	SAPPLICATION
S1
S2
S3	3E+14	300000002035314
S4	3E+14	300000002227110

Hello,

Above is a piece of my table, what I want to do is when New=blank, then new=sapplication;

DATA want;

SET have;

IF NEW = '.' THEN DO;

NEW= TRIM(PUT(SAPPLICATION,15.-L))

;

END;

run;

but the new is still in the format of 3E+14. can someone help this? thank you.

[TheShark]

Could you create NEW as character instead of numeric or do you need it for calculations? It looks like you're running into long number issues.

[septemberbulb]

It is better to keep it as numeric.

[jnvickery]

You may want to try formatting NEW with the best32. format when you read the data in.

[ballardw]

DATA want;

SET have;

IF NEW = '.' THEN DO;

NEW= TRIM(PUT(SAPPLICATION,15.-L))

;

FORMAT New best16.;

END;

run;

SAS Formats control appearance of values but are not changing the actual values.

[septemberbulb]

Thank you.

[Astounding · Accepted solution]

So NEW should be numeric.

It looks like SAPPLICATION is also numeric.  Correct me if I'm wrong about that, but the use of the PUT function suggests that it is numeric.

In that case, the correct syntax would be:

if new = . then new = sapplication;

format new 15.;

If this still generates scientific notation, that's a result of the printing format used when printing not being physically wide enough to hold 15 digits, not a result of what is contained in the data.