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SAS Tip of the Month
January 2007

Welcome to 2007! I hope the New Year was good to you.

This month I will look at rounding numbers and four different functions that SAS gives to rounding. The four that will be looked at here are:

• floor(x) - returns the largest integer that is less than or equal to x
• ceil(x) - returns the smallest integer that is greater than or equal to x
• round(x) - returns the nearest integer value nearest to x
• int(x) - returns the integer value of x

The following code and output demonstrates the output of certain values of x when the functions above are applied to the value x:

  data x;
    infile cards;
    input x;
    fl=floor(x);
    cl=ceil(x);
    ro=round(x);
    in=int(x);
    label fl='floor(x)'
          cl='ceil(x)'
          ro='round(x)'
          in='int(x)';
  cards;
   1.6
   1.5
   1.4
   1.0
   0.0
  -1.0
  -1.4
  -1.5
   -1.6
  ;
  run;

  title1 "x Rounded Using Four SAS Rounding Functions";
  proc print data=x label;
  run;

  === Output ===
        x Rounded Using Four SAS Rounding Functions

  Obs       x    floor(x)    ceil(x)    round(x)    int(x)

   1      1.6        1           2          2          1
   2      1.5        1           2          2          1
   3      1.4        1           2          1          1
   4      1.0        1           1          1          1
   5      0.0        0           0          0          0
   6     -1.0       -1          -1         -1         -1
   7     -1.4       -2          -1         -1         -1
   8     -1.5       -2          -1         -2         -1
   9     -1.6       -2          -1         -2         -1

Have a very happy 2007. See you in February.