How to display all digits in a SUM() column?

[80sMetalForever]

I'm summing a column:

SUM(DIRECT_EP)

and no matter how I format it I get at the most:  -5.6843418860808E-14

I would like to see ALL digits; I tried things like FORMAT 50.50 and got the same thing so obviously I'm going about this wrong.

thx!

not sure if it matters but I'm doing it in PROC SQL

[ChrisHemedinger · Accepted solution]

SAS adheres to an IEEE standard for floating-point number representation, and that precision might be what you're seeing.  For all of the details, reference this article:

Numerical precision in SAS

Chris

[snoopy369]

50.50 wouldn't work in any event, since it doesn't allocate any space for the decimal point, and I think you have to have one spot to the left of the decimal (so 50.48 is your maximum).

In general, assume you have 15 digits of safe precision at the most.  BEST16. would give you that.  To get more precise than that you'd have to use another system that used more than 8 bytes to store numbers.

[80sMetalForever]

thx guys, I talked the requester into rounding so not really an issue now but still a good lesson on the subject