The _OBSTAT_ variable is a character variable of length 20. It was introduced in SAS/INSIGHT software as a way to capture the state of observations, including the color and shape of markers and whether an observation is selected. The first few characters encode the state of binary options such as whether an observation is selected. A character is '1' if the corresponding property is true and '0' if the related property is false. The properties are described in the following list:

Character 1

stores whether the observation is selected.

Character 2

stores whether the observation is included in plots.

Character 3

stores whether the observation is included in analyses.

Character 4

stores whether the observation has a label.

Character 5

stores the marker shape for an observation. This is a value between 1 and 8 that corresponds to a shape, as given in the following table:

Value	Shape
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Characters 6–20

store the RGB value of the fill color for an observation marker. The RGB color model represents colors as combinations of the colors red, green, and blue.

Each component is a five-digit decimal number between 0 and 65535. Characters 6–10 store the red component. Characters 11–15 store the green component. Characters 16–20 store the blue component.

If you read a data set for which there is no associated DMM file and if that data set contains a variable named _OBSTAT_, then the state of each observation is determined by the corresponding value of the _OBSTAT_ variable.

If an _OBSTAT_ variable already exists when you select Generate _OBSTAT_ Variable from the variable menu, then the values of the variable are updated with the current state of the observations.