Date:         Wed, 27 Aug 2003 14:22:47 -0700
Reply-To:     Kristie Kooken <kkooken@PDD.NET>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Kristie Kooken <kkooken@PDD.NET>
Subject:      formating decimal values
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Hi SAS-L,

I am having a problem displaying decimal values using a data _null_,
here is my problem....

I have a variable named bsa that was input using the best format.  I
want to display this variable in a report using data _null_,
unfortunately, I am to only display however many decimal places there
are, and not pad the cases where there are no decimals with zeros.  For
example, I have one value that is 2.333 and some others that are 1.5 and
some that are 5.  I must display how they appear in the dataset and NOT
2.333, 1.500, 5.000.

Also, I need these values to lineup on the decimal place in the report.

I made a counter variable that counts the number of place that exist
after the decimal:

count= '8'||'.'||compress((length(trim(left((scan(bsa, 2,
'.'))))))-((scan(bsa, 2, '.'))=''));


I was using the 8. beginning part in order to generate a format... I was
making this variable a character variable being that character variables
tend to line up better in data _null_ (well, that been my experience..)


Then I was going to try to put this in a do loop...  it works okay but
it seems really long and complicated....  I was hoping someone had
another solution.  I haven't really dealt with such a problem before and
couldn't find a similar subject in the SAS-L archives.

Thanks, Kristie