Trailing zeros in numeric variable

[sfw_09]

Hello,

I am working with a secondary dataset that includes a rather complicated variable where some levels have many trailing zeros. For some reason, not all levels are included when I create a new variable based on the original variable levels. For example, one of the levels for the variable is 1020405100000 (n=16). But when I try to test the creation of a new variable based just on this value using the code below, it does not display the appropriate output of 16. Rather it says "level=0." This pattern continues for levels for this variable that include trailing zeros. However, if I insert shorter levels of the variable such as 1110 (n=20) in the below code, the new variable accurately reflects n=20.

if q12=1020405100000 then newvar=1;

It was suggested that I attempt to truncate the variable to see this would solve the problem.

 So instead of having:

1 1020405100000

2 10304051000000000

....;

It would be:

1 102040510

2 103040510

...;

Do you think this would solve the issue? If so, how is the best way to truncate the variable and remove the trailing zeros?

Thank you for any help.

[Krueger]

SUBSTRN(PUT(num_val, 20.), -1, 11)

Have you tried SUBSTRN function yet?

[Tom]

Are you sure the variable is a number and not a character string?

Anyway, you cannot store more than 15 or so decimal places in a number in SAS.  SAS stores all numbers as floating point.  You can use CONSTANT() function to see what is the largest integer that can be stored exactly.

174   data _null_;
175    max=constant('exactint');
176    put max= comma32.;
177   run;

max=9,007,199,254,740,992

So convert it to character. Or split it into two or more numbers.

[ballardw]

---

@sfw_09 wrote:

Hello,

I am working with a secondary dataset that includes a rather complicated variable where some levels have many trailing zeros. For some reason, not all levels are included when I create a new variable based on the original variable levels. For example, one of the levels for the variable is 1020405100000 (n=16). But when I try to test the creation of a new variable based just on this value using the code below, it does not display the appropriate output of 16. Rather it says "level=0." This pattern continues for levels for this variable that include trailing zeros. However, if I insert shorter levels of the variable such as 1110 (n=20) in the below code, the new variable accurately reflects n=20.

if q12=1020405100000 then newvar=1;

It was suggested that I attempt to truncate the variable to see this would solve the problem.

 So instead of having:

1 1020405100000

2 10304051000000000

....;

It would be:

1 102040510

2 103040510

...;

Do you think this would solve the issue? If so, how is the best way to truncate the variable and remove the trailing zeros?

Thank you for any help.

---

What you show sounds much like string manipulation has been done somewhere along the line. Note that for many purposes a character value will default to 8 characters, which is what you show. And if the value were actually numeric that comparison would yield newvar = 1.

Proof:

data example;
   q12 = 1020405100000 ;
   if q12=1020405100000 then newvar=1;
run;

So show us the result for proc contents for the variable Q12. I will bet a short stack of $$ that it will show character with length 8.