FedSQL informats have the following syntax:
$
indicates a character
informat; its absence indicates a numeric informat.
informat
names the informat.
The informat is a SAS informat or a user-defined informat that was
previously defined with the INVALUE statement in PROC FORMAT. For
more information on user-defined informats, see PROC FORMAT in Base SAS Procedures Guide.
w
specifies the informat
width, which for most informats is the number of columns in the input
data.
d
specifies an optional
decimal scaling factor in the numeric informats. SAS divides the input
data by 10 to the power of d.
Note: Even though SAS can read
up to 31 decimal places when you specify some numeric informats, floating-point
numbers with more than 12 decimal places might lose precision because
of the limitations of the eight-byte, floating-point representation
used by most computers.
Informats always contain
a period (.) as a part of the name. If you omit the
w and
the
d values from the informat,
SAS uses default values. If the data contains decimal points, SAS
ignores the
d value and reads
the number of decimal places that are actually in the input data.