well, we could waste time discussing it, the industry is a different universe and we'll speak past each other. There would be no multiplication of data, obviously. The analysis plan would stipulate or imply that the variable is needed, thus it would exist in a permanent dataset, refer to cdisc, sdtm, adam. The format applied would be indicated within that documentation etc. When i said 'etc' above i was alluding to validation, you cannot validate a variable that doesn't exist. The process is extremely pedantic, maybe they document things with proc compare etc. Thus, throwing a format within freq shows an old school nonchalance that doesn't exist anymore. Each to his own, but i would try to encourage (only incidentally) good programming practice when discussing code: http://www.phusewiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Good_Programming_Practice ... View more