Default SYSTEM 2000 Item Types

Table 8.1 contains the default conversions of SAS formats to SYSTEM 2000 item types. These conversions cannot be changed. However, you can alter the formats of the input SAS variables by using the MODIFY and FORMAT statements in the DATASETS procedure if you want to affect the behavior of the type conversions. The modified formats are saved in the access and view descriptors.

If there is no SAS format, a character variable becomes the item type CHARACTER (with a picture equal to the length of the variable or the value that is specified in the S2KLEN= statement), numeric variables that are 4 bytes become the item type REAL, and numeric variables that are 8 bytes become the item type DOUBLE. The formats saved in the access and view descriptors are $w. for character and BEST12. for numeric.