The numeric number is truncated

[qd96xuweifeng1]

Hello,

I have encountered one problem when I am extracting a numeric variable which is with 18 digits length from database. The last two digits are truncated to 0. For example, the number of 19999999999903 is changed to 19999999999900.

May I know what cause this problem? And how to solve it?

Thanks,

Weifeng

[Kurt_Bremser]

There is no solution. SAS datasets store numbers in 8 bytes, using the real format. This limits numbers to a precision of 15 to 16 decimal digits, which is sufficient for statistics. When dealing with the US GDP, cents are unimportant.

If this "number" is in fact some kind of code, store it as character.

[AMSAS]

Take a look at the documentation or do a search on the communities 

Numeric Precision