Character Data vs Numeric

[jjwagner]

How do you convert character data to numeric?

[art297]

data have;

  input have $;

cards;

1

10

333

;

data want;

  set have;

  want=input(have,best12.);

run;

[jjwagner]

I think I understand.  What does "best12." refer to?  It looks like I need to insert the $ symbol immediately after the charcter in the input statement.

[art297 · Accepted solution]

Best12. is simply a SAS numeric format.  The only place the $ was relevant was in reading the original values as characters.  Thus, in the example, have already is in character format and that was only used to create an example file.

In datastep want, the numeric variable want was created by re-inputting the variable have by converting it with the input function.

[jjwagner]

Thanks for the help.