Review of SAS Formats and the FORMAT Statement

Formatting Variable Values

Review of SAS Formats and the FORMAT Statement

In the Introduction to SAS Programming module, you worked with two SAS formats:

COMMAw.d displays numeric values with commas
DOLLARw.d displays numeric values with a leading dollar sign ($) and commas.

You also learned that SAS formats specify a w value, which is the width that is used for displaying the value. A period follows the w value.

     dollar9.    $ 5 , 3 4 9 . 4 1
           ^     1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Numeric SAS formats, such as the DOLLARw.d format, can also specify a d value, which is the number of decimal places to be displayed. Note that a period separates the w from the d value.

     dollar9.2    $ 5 , 3 4 9 . 4 1
             ^    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9