How to show negative money amounts in a report

[dbdinc]

I know I'm asking a lot of questions recently, but I'm new to SAS. Anyway, is there, for Enterprise Guide, a report format that includes both a dollar sign and parentheses for negative money amounts? My boss wants the parentheses, and if he didn't, I could use the dollar format. Is it possible to redefine a format?

 

[klaz2002]

The easiest way to do this is by using the 'negparenX.' format.

ex.

format your_var negparen32.2;

Hope that this helps you.
Klaz

 

[dbdinc]

Thank you klaz,

will that also put a dollar sign onto the field? The reason I ask is that yesterday, I tried using the negparen (not the negparenx) format, and did get the parentheses, but no dollar sign.

I appreciate your assistance....thanks!

 

[dbdinc]

Klaz,

disregard my last posting...I figured out what you meant by saying negparenx. However, is there no way to include both a dollar sign and the parentheses in my formatted output?

Thanks so much!

 

[ChrisW75]

You can create your own formats using Proc Format. You'll want to create a PICTURE format for this.
Look here, and read up on the PICTURE statement...

http://support.sas.com/onlinedoc/913/getDoc/en/proc.hlp/a000063536.htm

Should give you all you need. I used it a couple of times to create my own percent format for percentages that had already been multiplied by 100... It's pretty powerful and will be able to give you exactly what you need. There's examples at the bottom of the PICTURE statement page.
Enjoy.

Chris
Business Analyst, Code Monkey, Data Wrangler.
SAS Guru.

 

[dbdinc]

Thanks, Chris,

I'll play around with your suggestion and see what it does!

I appreciate your assistance.