I. Text Summary To go to the page where a task, programming feature, or concept was presented, select a link.

Temporarily Formatting Values The FORMAT statement, when used in a SAS procedure, associates a particular format with one or more variables. Formats assigned in this way will remain in effect only for the current processing step.

Permanently Formatting Values By placing the FORMAT statement in a DATA step, variables are assigned formats permanently. In the Explorer window, display properties for data set columns to see the formats that are assigned to the variables.

Mixing Temporary and Permanent Formats Formats can be assigned in both the DATA step and in procedures, so that a variable can be given a permanent format but still be displayed in other ways. The formats assigned in a procedure (such as, PROC PRINT) will override permanent formats when the procedure processes.

Predefined SAS Formats SAS software provides many predefined formats, which are summarized in the online Help system.

Creating User-Defined Formats The FORMAT procedure allows descriptive values to substitute for the values of coded variables. The LIBRARY= option stores the new formats in a specified format catalog; otherwise, they are stored in a default catalog named WORK.FORMATS. The keyword FMTLIB displays the formats and values that are currently stored in the catalog. The VALUE statement defines a new format for the values of a variable.

Specifying Values Formats can be specified for a single value, a range of values, or a list of unique values. Unique values should be separated by commas. When character values are specified, the range must be enclosed in quotes and the format name must begin with a  dollar sign ($). Non-inclusive numeric ranges can be specified by use of the less than sign (<). The keywords HIGH, LOW, and OTHER can be used to label values not specifically addressed in a range.

Associating User-Defined Formats with Variables To access the permanent, user-defined formats in a format catalog, you'll need to reference the catalog library by using a LIBNAME statement. To associate user-defined formats with variables in the FORMAT statement, use the same format names in both the FORMAT and VALUE statements, but place a period at the end of the format name when it is used in the FORMAT statement.

II. Syntax To go to the page where a statement or an option was presented, select a link.

LIBNAME libref  'SAS-data-library';

PROC FORMAT LIBRARY=libref FMTLIB;

VALUE name                     range-1='formatted-value-1'                     < . . .                     range-n='formatted-value-n' >;

FORMAT variable format-name.                          < . . . variable(s) format-name.>;

RUN;

III. Sample Program libname library 'c:\sas\formats\lib'; proc format library=library fmtlib; value JobFmt 103='manager' 105='text processor'; run; data perm.empinfo; infile empdata; input @9 firstname $5. @1 lastname $7. +7 jobtitle 3. @19 salary comma9.; format salary comma9.2 jobtitle jobfmt.; run;