Just started to learn SAS, but need some help.

[PRP]

Hi:
I'm starting of with a simple program to read in data and calculate the mean. I have two columns of data (numbers), but SAS says that column 1 is text and column 2 is numerical. Column 1 does have a negative number in there, and I'm wondering if the '-' is letting SAS think that it's a text and not numeric. How can I change the format?

[sbb]

Share your SAS code.

Scott Barry
SBBWorks, Inc.

[abdullala]

it must be that your column 1 was defined as char, not likely only because of the negative sign. use a new variable to transform it to numeric:
column3=input(column1, best.)

[Doc_Duke]

There are lots of reasons you could get that error. For instance, it will occur if there is a space between the "-" and the digits when you are using free format input or the import wizard. As Scott said, share your code and log.