Change Character type to numeric type

[Sandeep77]

Hi all,

I have a data where the debt_code is a character ype and format is $24. I want to change the debt_code to numeric. Can you suggest how to do it?

sample dataset:

Data Sample;
infile cards expandtabs;
input debt_code release_date :date9.;
format release_date date9.;
datalines ;
394013684 30-Mar-23
238505887 30-Mar-23
428101570 30-Mar-23
428101570 30-Mar-23
425461019 30-Mar-23
;
run;

Thanks

[Tom · Accepted solution]

You will have to make a new variable since you want it to have a different type.

You can use an INPUT() function call to make a number from it.

debt_number = input(debt_code,32.);

You can use RENAME statement to change the variable names if want.

rename debt_code=debt_char debt_number=debt_code ;

BUT if the length of the digit strings in DEPT_CODE is longer than 16 then changing it to a number runs the risk of loosing precision.  The maximum integer that SAS can store is: 9,007,199,254,740,992

188  data _null_;
189    maxint=constant('exactint');
190    put maxint= comma32. ;
191    digits=length(strip(cats(maxint)));
192    put digits=;
193  run;

maxint=9,007,199,254,740,992
digits=16

[SAS_Cares]

These may help: 

How to convert a character value to numeric in SAS https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/How-to-convert-a-character-value-to-numeric-i...

Convert variable values from character to numeric or from numeric to character https://support.sas.com/kb/24/590.html