Ali,

Instead of shortening the numeric length, try the COMPRESS=BINARY option. It works as either a system option or a dataset option. You will find that it saves MORE space than you would save by shortening the storage length of your numeric variables.

Ed

Edward Heaton, SAS Senior Systems Analyst, Westat (An Employee-Owned Research Corporation), 1600 Research Boulevard, RW-4541, Rockville, MD 20850-3195 Voice: (301) 610-4818 Fax: (301) 294-3879 mailto:EdHeaton@Westat.com http://www.Westat.com

-----Original Message----- From: owner-sas-l@listserv.uga.edu [mailto:owner-sas-l@listserv.uga.edu] On Behalf Of Ali G Sent: Friday, October 28, 2005 9:22 AM To: sas-l@uga.edu Subject: Re: Resetting numeric variable length

> DON'T DO THIS. Leave it with a length of 8. If you only want to show 5

> digits then use the format "5." when you display it or assign that > format to the variable.

I have to: I'm extracting a monster DB2 table and need to shorten the numeric lengths down to save some valuable space. A pass-thru to DB2 seems to set all numerics to 8 by default and I need to change them.