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SAS Tip of the Month
August 2008

Transferring a numeric variable to a character value is a common task, a lot more common than people realize – infact most people do not realize they are doing it. Take for example the following code that is inside a datastep:

   if hours>40 then
     flagtxt='NOTE: Hours reported are greater than 40 – reported '||
             'hours are: '||compress(put(hours,8.2.));

In the example we are placing the HOURS value that is stored as numeric to a character string. If we had just done:

   if hours>40 then
     flagtxt='NOTE: Hours reported are greater than 40 – reported '||
             'hours are: ‘||hours;

SAS would have brought up a message in the SAS LOG indicating that a numeric to character conversion had been done within SAS – these messages should be looked at.

In the above example, the conversion is easy to spot, but not something like:

   Tothours = tothours + hours;

where the variable HOURS is numeric and TOTHOURS is character – here some very funny things can go on and unexpected results occur.

Let me show you now a classic example that I show people regarding this issue:

   191 data _null_;
   192 length x $8;
   193 x = 1/3;
   194 x = x * 3;
   195 put x=;
   196 run;

   NOTE: Numeric values have been converted to character values
         at the places given by: (Line):(Column).
         193:9 194:10
   NOTE: Character values have been converted to numeric values
         at the places given by: (Line):(Column).
         194:8
   x=0.999999

The answer for x should of course be 1, not 0.999999 – what the program first did was calculate 1/3 and stored it as a character, then multiplied that value by 3. I did not copy across the LOG messages but it said that “NOTE: Numeric values have been converted to character values at the places given by …”

To avoid the issues of numeric to character conversion, please always use a PUT statement with a format to put the correct numeric value into a character variable.

Next month, Character to Numeric conversion.