SAS programming: variables

A variables hat the following attributes:

• name; it identifies the variable (see also automatic variables)
• data type: Either numeric (default) or character.
• length (bytes used to store the value the variable referes to)
• format
• informat
• A label (description up to 256 characters)
• The position in an observation
• Index type (none, simple, composite or both)

By default, SAS creates each variable with a length of 8 bytes - longer character values are then truncated.

The length statement can be used to specify a different size.

The data type of a variable is either numeric or character.

missing values

SAS Programming Language

variable lists