Working with Character Variables

Introduction to Working with Character Variables

Purpose

In this section, you will learn how to do the following:

identify character variables
set the length of character variables
align character values within character variables
handle missing values of character variables
work with character variables, character constants, and character expressions in SAS program statements
instruct SAS to read fields that contain numbers as character variables in order to save space

Prerequisites

Before proceeding with this section, you should understand the concepts presented in the following topics:

Part 1, "Introduction to SAS"
Part 2, "Getting Your Data into Shape"
Understanding DATA Step Processing

Character Variables in SAS

A character variable is a variable whose value contains letters, numbers, and special characters, and whose length can be from 1 to 32,767 characters long. Character variables can be used in declarative statements, comparison statements, or assignment statements where they can be manipulated to create new character variables.

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