General Informat Syntax

FedSQL informats have the following syntax:
[$]informat[w].[d]
Arguments
$
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.
For more information about how informats work and a complete list of informats, see SAS Formats and Informats: Reference.
Last updated: February 23, 2017