SAS Language Reference: Dictionary

Definition

An informat is an instruction that SAS uses to read data values into a variable. For example, the following value contains a dollar sign and commas:

$1,000,000

To remove the dollar sign ($) and commas (,) before storing the numeric value 1000000 in a variable, read this value with the COMMA11. informat.

Unless you explicitly define a variable first, SAS uses the informat to determine whether the variable is numeric or character. SAS also uses the informat to determine the length of character variables.

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