Invalid numeric data...while it supposed to stay character...

[irinnew]

Hi Everybody,

One more question from my side! (it is not my week:-(

After I run code below I got a strange log message. Actually my input data are all character data and I double checked them with PROC CONTENTS.

It looks like as the result of my code system treats field Fno as numeric and complains that it is invalid.

I have 2 questions:
1. Why it started to be treated as numeric now?
2. How to avoid the problem?

________________________________________________________
data INPUTXREF;
466 merge INPUTDATA(IN=A)
467 REF (IN=B);
468
469 A=substr(Fno,1,9);
470 b=substr(MC_sub_num,1,9);
471 if A;
472
473 run;

NOTE: Character values have been converted to numeric values at the places given by:
(Line)Column).
469:7 470:7
NOTE: Invalid numeric data, 'N17777777' , at line 469 column 7.

 

[klaz2002]

A and B are numeric flags set by the IN option on the merge statement. What you are doing is trying to reset the value of A with a char variable. What I would suggest is use another variable name for your substr() function.
ex.
fno_sub = substr(fno,1,9);
mc = substr(mc_sub_num,1,9);

Klaz

 

[ChrisW75]

Yep, spot on. You misunderstood the error message.

NOTE: Character values have been converted to numeric values at the places given by:

It's not complaining that the field is numeric, it's saying that it has converted a Character variable to a numeric variable. Basically it's tried to convert the substring of FNO (character) into a numeric variable (A), which as Klaz points out is a numeric variable which you have already defined in the IN= options. The variables A and B defined in the IN= options are set to 1 or 0 (generally referred to a True or False), but you aren't using these in your merge step, I would carefully look at this to make sure that's giving you what you want. Also, there's no By statement in your merge. I understand though that you may have cut these out of your code to make it shorter in your post though.
Ain't SAS fun?