Numeric to character sas how to#

Referenceid = input(substrn(productID, INT(LOG10(productID))+1-3,4),8.) If you try to do something to a character variable that should only be done to a numeric variable, SAS automatically tries first to convert the character. Here is the conversion to character: chardate put(date,yymmdd10. If you care going to do additional computations or work with the date, you need to leave it as numeric. You can convert the date to a plain old character string, which is only useful in labels and titles and reports. Since SUBSTRN() returns character variable, we need to convert it to numeric with INPUT() function. Use the INPUT statement to read the data into a temporary numeric variable. There is no such thing as a character date in SAS. So SAS assumes you just left the off the front of your character format name. Once you have converted the data to a character string then you can no longer use the numeric MMDDYY format with the value. Referenceid = input(substrn(x,length(x)-3,4),8.) Well you can, but that just means SAS will automatically convert the number into a string using the BEST12. In order to make it run for numeric variables, we first need to convert numeric variables to character variables with PUT() function. The SUBSTR() / SUBSTRN() function works only for character variables. Run Example 3 : Get last N digits from a numeric variable Referenceid = substrn(productID,length(productID)-3,4) To workaround this problem, we can use SUBSTRN() which handles missing cases while extracting. When you apply SUBSTR() function in case of missing cases, it returns a note in log ' Invalid second argument'. Suppose you have multiple product IDs in which some of them are missing. Given a numeric variable called region and a numeric format region format in sashelp. The result of a PUT function is always a character value. The calculated SUBSTR() function would work like below -Įxample 2 : Handle missing while extracting The variable is a character or numeric variable, and the formats are a SAS or user-defined format. SAS/IML 15.1 was released as part of SAS 9.4m6. The program also converts all character values to uppercase. Specifically, the CREATE FROM and APPEND FROM statements now support writing multiple matrices of any types. The program below searches a SAS data set for all numeric values equal to 999 and converts these values to a SAS missing value. The LENGTH() function returns the length of a character variable. If you want to create a SAS data set that contains mixed-type data (numeric and character), SAS/IML 15.1 provides support to write multiple matrices to a data set by using a single statement. = SUBSTR(character-variable, beginning-position, number-of-characters-to-pull) If you would rather have them left aligned add a step between the proc transpose steps to modify the 'middle' dataset.The SUBSTR() function returns sub-string from a character variable. data middle Īlso note that it will typically right align the converted numeric variables. If you would rather have them left aligned add a step between the proc transpose steps to modify the 'middle' dataset. You can later drop the _ROW_ and _CHARVAR_ variables.Īlso note that it will typically right align the converted numeric variables.

Numeric to character sas how to#

Below we show in more detail how to use the FORMAT statement to format numeric, character, and date variables. data to_transpose Īnd then use that as the source table to start with. FORMAT variable-name (s) format-name variable-name (s) format-name variable-name (s) format-name Example: FORMAT income expenses DOLLAR10.2 transactiondate MMDDYY10. If you don't know if you have an id variable or a character variable then you could just create one first. Proc print data=want run The CONTENTS ProcedureĪlphabetic List of Variables and Attributes This function uses the following basic syntax: numericvar input (charactervar, comma9.) The following example shows how to use this function in practice. Proc transpose data=middle out=want (drop=_name_) You can use the input() function in SAS to convert a character variable to a numeric variable. Out=middle (where=(lowcase(_name_) ne '_row_')) Notice we will need to exclude _ROW_ from the resulting data.

So in that dataset _ROW_ is my unique identifier. Let's make a little test dataset that has a number and a date variable. Two things you need to make sure you have.ġ) A way to uniquely identify the original rows. One easy way is to use PROC TRANSPOSE twice.