calculate difference between character numbers

[Jedrzej]

Hi I have two variables with descriptive statistics and I need to calculate the difference between them

_name_	var1	var2	var_want
mean(sd)	76.4(11.39)	77.2(8.63)
min,max	40.0,113.0	50.0,106.0

i've tried this,example

if _name_="min,max" then var_want=substr(var,1,2)-substr(var2,1,2)||","||substr(var,6,3)-substr(var2,6,3)

but it doesn't work cause 40-50=-10 and sas cannot convert it to char (invalid numeric data)

is there a simple way to calculate the difference between var1 and var2 ?

[Kurt_Bremser · Accepted solution]

Maxim 2: Read the Log.

You will find NOTEs about automatic conversion of character to numeric and back.

To do reliable calculations, convert to numeric explicitly. The conversion back to character can be done implicitly by using the CATS function:

data have;
input _name_ :$10. var1 :$15. var2 :$15.;
datalines;
mean(sd)  76.4(11.39) 77.2(8.63)
min,max 40.0,113.0  50.0,106.0
;

data want;
set have;
if _name_="min,max"
then var_want = cats(
  input(scan(var1,1,","),best.) - input(scan(var2,1,","),best.),
  ",",
  input(scan(var1,2,","),best.) - input(scan(var2,2,","),best.)
);
run;

Also please note how I presented your data in a data step with datalines; please do so yourself in the future, as others can easily recreate a dataset with a simple copy/paste and submit, without any doubts about variable types, attributes and content.