You can use Proc Format to tell you about the custom formats/informats you have available.
Example that creates one format and one informat in the Work library and default format catalog. Then
gets the descriptions with the FMTLIB option. Run the below code and see in the description the the $ABC has the words FORMAT NAME, indicating it is an output format and $PDQ has INFORMAT NAME indicating it is used for reading.
You would want to use Library=LIBRARY.cerform in the Proc format statement to examine you custom formats.
/* create a custom format to use later*/
proc format ;
value $abc
'abc'='some formatted result'
;
invalue $pdq
'pdq'='input result value'
;
run;
/* get descriptions of the current custom format/informats */
proc format library=work fmtlib;
run;
I would quite often have an informat/format pair defined because the INVALUE has different options available such as <some value description> = _error_ to report in the log that the value encountered may not be valid and reports as such in the log, or to create special missing values that a FORMAT could then provide details about when requested. Plus for reading text the INVALUE option UPCASE is very helpful to standardize values so that Abc, ABc, aBc, abC (etc) are all read into the value ABC.
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