Date:         Mon, 10 Feb 1997 10:11:46 -0500
Reply-To:     "Maria M. Corrada" <mcorrada@WELCHLINK.WELCH.JHU.EDU>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
From:         "Maria M. Corrada" <mcorrada@WELCHLINK.WELCH.JHU.EDU>
Subject:      concatenation error
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I'm trying to concatenate the values of a few (in this case 4) numeric
variables into one new character variable ('newvar').  The program below
does what I need.
However, if I don't include the length statement, the program doesn't
work and in the log I get a message that it converted character variables
to numeric, after converting them from numeric to character. Does anybody
know why this is? I know that during the concatenation the numeric
variables are converted to character, but why does it try to convert them
back to numeric if the length statement is not specified?
 
Thanks for the help.
 
P.S. The output of the correct program with the length statement is as
follows:
 
OBS    VAR1    VAR2    VAR3    VAR4    NEWVAR    I
 1       1       0       1       0      1010     5
 
 
657  data one;
658    var1=1; var2=0; var3=1; var4=0;
659
660    array vars{4} var1-var4;
661  * length newvar $ 9;
662
663    do i = 1 to 4;
664       put i newvar vars{i};
665       newvar=compress(newvar||vars{i});
666    end;
667
NOTE: Numeric values have been converted to character values at the
places given by: (Line):(Column).
      665:22   665:30
NOTE: Character values have been converted to numeric values at the
places given by: (Line):(Column).
      665:13
1 . 1
2 0.1 0
3 0.1 1
4 0.11 0
NOTE: The data set WORK.ONE has 1 observations and 6 variables.
NOTE: The DATA statement used 0.16 seconds.
668  proc print;run;
NOTE: The PROCEDURE PRINT used 0.0 seconds.
 
OBS    VAR1    VAR2    VAR3    VAR4    I    NEWVAR
 1       1       0       1       0     5     0.11
 
 
=====================================
Maria M. Corrada, Sc.M.
Johns Hopkins University
Alzheimer's Disease Research Center
5501 Hopkins Bayview Circle Rm 1B.82
Baltimore, MD 21224
Voice: (410)550-3068
Fax:   (410)550-3369