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.
INFMT is the alias for
the INFORMAT statement.