ATTRIBUTE Statement
- ATTRIBUTE variable-list attribute-list ... ;
The ATTRIBUTE statement assigns formats,
labels, and lengths
to variables in the output data sets.
The variable-list can contain variable names and
variable name range specifications.
See the section "Variable Lists" for details.
The attributes specified in the following attribute list
apply to all variables in the variable list:
An attribute-list consists of one or more of the following options:
- FORMAT= format
-
associates a format with variables in variable-list.
The format can be either a standard SAS format or a format defined
with the FORMAT procedure.
The default formats for variables depend on the file type.
- LABEL= "label"
-
assigns a label to the variables in the variable list.
The default labels for variables depend on the file type.
Labels can be up to 256 bytes in length.
- LENGTH= length
-
specifies the number of bytes used to store the values of
variables in the variable list.
The default lengths for numeric variables depend on the file type.
Usually default lengths are set to 5 bytes.
(For CRSP files, the default lengths are 6 bytes).
The length specification also controls the amount of memory that
PROC DATASOURCE uses to hold variable values while processing the
input data file.
Thus, specifying a LENGTH= value smaller than the default will
reduce both the disk space taken up by the output data sets and
the amount of memory used by the PROC DATASOURCE step, at the
cost of reduced precision of output data values.
Copyright © 1999 by SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.
