Step-by-Step Programming with Base SAS 9.4

Introduction to Working with Character Variables

Purpose

In this section, you will learn how to do the following:

• identify character variables
• set the length of character variables
• align character values within character variables
• handle missing values of character variables
• work with character variables, character constants, and character expressions in SAS program statements
• instruct SAS to read fields that contain numbers as character variables in order to save space

Prerequisites

Before proceeding with this section, you should understand the concepts presented in the following topics:

• Part 1, “Introduction to SAS”
• Part 2, “Getting Your Data into Shape”
• Understanding DATA Step Processing

Character ...