ACCESS Procedure Reference

INFORMAT Statement

Changes a SAS informat for a DBMS column.

Optional statement
Applies to:	access descriptor or view descriptor
Interacts with:	ASSIGN, CONTENT, DROP, RESET

Syntax
Details

Syntax

INFORMAT column-identifier-1 <=> SAS-format-name
<...column-identifier-n <=> SAS-format-name>;

Details

The INFORMAT statement changes a SAS variable informat from its default informat; the default SAS variable informat is based on the data type of the DBMS column. (See ACCESS Procedure Formats and Informats for ADABAS for information about the default informats that the ACCESS Procedure assigns to your DBMS data types.)

An editing statement, such as INFORMAT, must follow the CREATE statement and the database-description statements when you create a descriptor. See CREATE Statement for more information about the order of statements.

The column-identifier argument can be either the column name or the positional equivalent from the LIST statement, which is the number that represents the column's place in the access descriptor. For example, to associate the DATE9. informat with the BIRTHDATE column and with the second column in the access descriptor, submit the following statement:

informat 2=date9. birthdate=date9.;

The column-identifier is specified on the left and the SAS informat is specified on the right of the expression. The equal sign (=) is optional. If the column name contains special characters or national characters, enclose the name in quotation marks. You can enter informats for as many columns as you want in one INFORMAT statement.

You can use the INFORMAT statement with a view descriptor only if the ASSIGN statement that was used when creating the access descriptor was specified with the NO value.

Note: You do not have to issue a SELECT statement in a view descriptor for the columns included in the INFORMAT statement. The INFORMAT statement selects the columns. When you use the INFORMAT statement with access descriptors, the INFORMAT statement reselects columns that were previously dropped with the DROP statement. [cautionend]

INFMT is the alias for the INFORMAT statement.

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