When importing data into SAS, there is a field that is sometimes numeric, and sometimes character. How can I always convert it to character? It seems like there is not a way to convert a character to a character.
Is there a way to do this on the import, such as declaring the field a character datatype when I import the file?
If the field is in a text file you can simply import it into a character variable :
data myData;
infile "myPath\myFile.txt";
length myField $12;
input x myField y;
run;
If the field is an Excel worksheet column then you must include the mixed=yes option in the libname statement
libname xl Excel "myPath\myFile.xls" mixed=yes;
data myData;
set xl.'Sheet1$'n;
run;
PG
Best way is to not use IMPORT. Instead have the files supplied to you in a known format and read them using a program. Then you have control over how the variables are named and the type.
I ended up using CATS() in the proc sql to convert the field to a character. This works even if it was already a character to begin with.
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