CODEWITHSUNDEEP
sassas-iml
Mhoram
Mhoram

Reputation: 431

Making SAS handle very small numbers without rounding

I have a range of large (4- or 5-digit) numbers, which I need to raise to the -1 power. Because the numbers are all so large, they are obviously going to be very small when raised to that power. When I do it in SAS (using the elementwise operator), all the numbers in the output get rounded(?) to -1. So I get nothing but a lot of minus ones for the output.

Is this indeed the result of rounding? Can I get around this by formatting the output in a certain way? If so, what is the syntax for this? Again, sorry for asking about such simple things, I'm utterly new to SAS.

Code:

proc iml; 
  use sasdata.have; 
  read all var {Distance} into D; 
  print D; 
  Dmin = -1##D; 
  print Dmin;
quit;

Upvotes: 0

Views: 234

Answers (2)

Mhoram
Mhoram

Reputation: 431

Never mind, I think I know what's been causing this. The problem was the order of operations! When I changed -1##D to D##-1, the strange transmogrification of all my numbers to -1 stopped, and I finally got the answers of the type I expected. I'm sorry, I'm very stressed and pressed for time at this moment, hence this dumb mistake in my code.

Upvotes: 0

Joe
Joe

Reputation: 63424

Your problem is that you're raising -1 to the power of 5000 (or whatever), as opposed to the opposite.

proc iml; 
  use work.have; 
  read all var {Distance} into D; 
  print D; 
  Dmin = D##-1; 
  print Dmin;
quit;

Upvotes: 1

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