CODEWITHSUNDEEP
sas
athresh
athresh

Reputation: 563

concatenating a numeric with character

data test;
name = 'abcdefgh';
age = 30;
res = name || age;
run;

When I run the above code the variable res holds -> abcdefgh 30

Why the numeric variable age is padding with blanks and then concatenated with the character variable?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 52220

Answers (4)

akaDrHouse
akaDrHouse

Reputation: 2250

You had asked "why" it is doing it. If you force SAS to not define it as it wants to with the nice methods others have mentioned here, you can run into sorting issues when one variable is defined as a string and another is numeric. Example: 

VAR3 = VAR1 || VAR2;
VAR4 = VAR1 || PUT(VAR2,2.);

VAR1     VAR2    VAR3     VAR4
DOG      1       DOG 1    DOG1
DOG      2       DOG 2    DOG2
...      ...     ...      ...
DOG      11      DOG11    DOG11

If you sort on VAR3 you get what you probably want.... If you sort on VAR4 you get DOG1, DOG11, DOG2 ...

Just my observation. Hope that helps.

Upvotes: 0

Felita
Felita

Reputation: 1

You can use this as well:

res=name || put(age,3.);

Don't use Strip,Trim etc functions for numeric variables. You will get NOTE in your log window:

NOTE: Numeric values have been converted to character values at the places given by (Line):(Column).

Upvotes: 0

Joe
Joe

Reputation: 63434

When a number and a character are concatenated, the number is converted to a character variable first, then the two character variables are concatenated together. The default format for converting a numeric variable to a character variable is BEST12. (although that can vary based on the format of your numeric variable). put(30,BEST12.) would yield '          30' which is then concatenated to the character variable.

To avoid this, either use strip as Aaron notes, or do your concatenation using CATS (res=cats(name,age);) which automatically strips all variables, or put the numeric variable yourself (and with PUT, you can forcibly left-justify it if you want with the -l option).

Upvotes: 8

Aaron Kurtzhals
Aaron Kurtzhals

Reputation: 2036

Try the below code to concatenate the variables with no space.

data test;
name = 'abcdefgh';
age = 30;
res = name || strip(age);
run;

SAS can be quirky. My best guess as to "why" is that SAS is trying to make the numbers look right-justified for text output listings.

Upvotes: 2

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