Date:         Mon, 13 May 1996 13:55:10 +0100
Reply-To:     John Whittington <johnw@MAG-NET.CO.UK>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
From:         John Whittington <johnw@MAG-NET.CO.UK>
Subject:      Re: sas help needed
Comments: To: Dan Zhang <zhang02@ASSETS.WHARTON.UPENN.EDU>

On Sun, 12 May 1996, Dan Zhang <zhang02@ASSETS.WHARTON.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
 
>What does "Floating Point Overflow" mean?  I got this message from the
>SAS-Log file and my SAS program stopped at this point. How can I avoid
>this problem?
 
I will be interested to hear answers to this, too.  I always used to regard
this as simply indicating an 'overflow' - i.e. that, during the course of
calculations, a number had become too large to store.  However, having just
been playing for a few minutes with 6.11, I cannot induce it to produce that
particular error message.  Whenever I contrive to get a number that is too
big to store in SAS (above about 1e318 in Windows), the error message I get is:
 
   "A number has become too large at line xxx column yyy"
 
Is this a change in wording of the error message in 6.11 - or do both
messages still exist, and have different meanings?
 
The other interesting point is that 'underflowing' produces no error message
at all, and excution continues normally;  if a value becomes too small to
represent, it seems to just be treated as zero.
 
John
 
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Dr John Whittington,        Voice:      +44 1296 730225
Mediscience Services        Fax:        +44 1296 738893
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