If you specify the DIFF option in the LSMEANS statement, and if you have one or more CLASS variables that are formatted and whose lengths sufficiently exceed the lengths of their formats, then SAS might terminate. However, the DIFF=ANOM option does not cause this problem. The affected procedures are listed in the About tab of this problem note.

The problem can be avoided by removing the DIFF option, or by removing the LSMEANS statement altogether. You may be able to retain the LSMEANS statement and DIFF option if you disassociate formats from the CLASS variables, or for variables with long lengths, replace them with variables with short lengths.

If you associate formats with variables by including FORMAT statements in your procedure code, you can simply remove the FORMAT statements to disassociate the formats from the variables. If the formats were associated with variables when creating or modifying the data set (this can be checked by running PROC CONTENTS on the data set), you can disassociate formats from variables by using a FORMAT statement that lists variables but no format. For example, these statements use PROC DATASETS to remove the format associated with variable X from the data set WORK.MYDATA:

     proc datasets; 
       modify mydata;
       format x; 
       run;

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