You might receive segmentation violation errors or bus errors when you try to access a multilabel format if the format contains a range with more than 4094 labels.

The SAS^® procedures that support multilabel formats are SUMMARY, MEANS, TABULATE, and REPORT. The limit is 255 labels for a single range.

The only workaround is to reduce the number of labels for the range.

Operating System and Release Information

Product Family	Product	System	SAS Release
			Reported	Fixed*
SAS System	Base SAS	Microsoft® Windows® for 64-Bit Itanium-based Systems	9 TS M0	9.3 TS1M0
		64-bit Enabled AIX	9 TS M0	9.3 TS1M0
		64-bit Enabled HP-UX	9 TS M0	9.3 TS1M0
		64-bit Enabled Solaris	9 TS M0	9.3 TS1M0
		HP-UX IPF	9 TS M0	9.3 TS1M0
		OpenVMS Alpha	9 TS M0	9.3 TS1M0
		Tru64 UNIX	9 TS M0	9.3 TS1M0
		Linux on Itanium	9.1 TS1M3 SP2	9.3 TS1M0
		Solaris for x64	9.1 TS1M3 SP4	9.3 TS1M0
		Linux for x64	9.2 TS1M0	9.3 TS1M0
		OpenVMS on HP Integrity	9.2 TS1M0	9.3 TS1M0

* For software releases that are not yet generally available, the Fixed Release is the software release in which the problem is planned to be fixed.

This code will recreate the error. Reducing the counter in the first loop to 4094 will allow the code to run without errors.

---

data ctrl ;
length start $5 ;
/* changing the upper limit to 4094 avoids the error */
do j=1 to 4095 ;
start='11111' ;
label= ceil(99999*ranuni(0)) ;
fmtname="myfmt" ;
type="c";
hlo='M' ;
output ;
end ;
do j=1 to 300;
label=ceil(99999*ranuni(0)) ;
start= put(ceil(99999*ranuni(0)),z5.) ;
fmtname="myfmt" ;
type="c";
hlo='M' ;
output ;
end ;
run ;

proc format cntlin=ctrl;
run;

data test;
z='30030';
put z $myfmt.;
run;

If a multilabel format is created with more than 4094 labels for a single range, accessing of the format results in segmentation violations or bus errors.

Type:	Problem Note
Priority:	medium

Date Modified:	2011-08-09 12:37:33
Date Created:	2009-06-18 16:53:26