Decimal shown in error log does not seem to exist.

[KRusso]

I have a table with Latitude and Longitude saved in character format.  When I run this code I get this note:

Invalid numeric data, Longitude='-80.192798.' , at line 65 column 20.

However, when I look at the table, none of the records contain that second decimal at the end.

I've used the scan, find, compress, count to eliminate this mystery decimal at the end. But these functions do not recognize it either.

The data that originally created the dataset was in MS Access. When data was imported, there were no errors. 

data agenttable; 

set agenttableFromaccess (keep =  Agent Latitude Longitude); 

  FORMAT LAT LNG BEST12.; 

LAT=LATITUDE;

LNG=Longitude;

run;

[Kurt_Bremser]

Whenever you encounter ERRORs or WARNINGs, post the complete (all code and messages) log of the failing step by copy/pasting it into a window opened with this button:

Longitude is a character variable containing something which prevents automatic conversion to numeric. Display it with a $HEX format of sufficient length to see which characters are contained.

[Tom]

Numbers can only contain one decimal point.

'-80.192798.'

has two decimal points.

[Reeza]

That isn't how you convert a character variable to a numeric one. You need to use INPUT to convert it.

lat = input(latitude, best32.);
lng = input(longitude, best32.);

[KRusso · Accepted solution]

the data had strange characters in it. This fixed it: Longitude =Compress(tranwrd(Longitude,'0A'x,' '),,'kw')

[Tom]

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@KRusso wrote:

the data had strange characters in it. This fixed it: Longitude =Compress(tranwrd(Longitude,'0A'x,' '),,'kw')

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So what is the goal of those function calls?

You convert the linefeed into a space.  Then you eliminated all of the non-printable characters, even the linefeeds you just remove.  So why not just remove the TRANWRD() function call?

Or did you mean to convert non-breaking spaces ('A0'X) to spaces first?  That character will NOT be removed by COMPRESS() as apparently COMPRESS() thinks it IS a printable character.

Why not just keep the digits and other characters used to represent numbers?

lng=input(compress(longitude,'+-.E','kd'),32.);