CAT Function

[Nidhi_vats]

Can we use CAT Function on numeric columns?

And what is the difference between CATS, CATX and CATT functions.

I am getting confuse between these function.

And what is the data type of the resulted values

[Cynthia_sas]

Hi:
I suggest reading the documentation about the differences, it is very clear in the doc. The result of concatenation is a character variable.
Cynthia

[AndrewHowell]

(Sounds like a test question)..

@Nidhi_vats - do some basic research of your own, maybe even try out some examples. By the time you typed out your question, you probably could have Google'd the answer.

If there's something you've found & don't understand, or want to discuss pros & cons of the various functions (and also the concatenation operators (!!, ||, etc), post here and then let's talk..

[Reeza · Accepted solution]

Can we use CAT Function on numeric columns?

Yes, but it applies the BEST function to convert them and that may not be what you want. Especially if you have dollars or comma's in your data.

For the other functions, check out this paper, it's 15 page so a bit longer but covers them in detail. In general, if you need information on a  specific topic, search that topic on lexjansen.com and you'll find a ton of resources:

http://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings10/205-2010.pdf

SAS CATS documentation, specifically see the "comparisons" and "see also" sections which link you to related functions and highlights the differences. 

https://go.documentation.sas.com/?docsetId=ds2ref&docsetTarget=n0neggc3ooichfn17gw7hyal8kin.htm&docs...

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@Nidhi_vats wrote:

Can we use CAT Function on numeric columns?

And what is the difference between CATS, CATX and CATT functions.

I am getting confuse between these function.

And what is the data type of the resulted values

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[ballardw]

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@Nidhi_vats wrote:

Can we use CAT Function on numeric columns?

And what is the difference between CATS, CATX and CATT functions.

I am getting confuse between these function.

And what is the data type of the resulted values

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Are CAT and CATQ functions included in the confusion? How about the || operator?