I looked up this code in the Command Syntax Reference Manual (available through the Help menu) and there it was—a very useful command which can be applied in many applications.
In brief, it does exactly what the name implies. It changes the Variable Type (string or numeric) or Format of variables, including the Width of string variables. As I was reading the explanation, it appears to be a new and improved Format statement, a so-called Format on steroids!
Format statements are often used to change the width and decimals of numeric variables or the format of a date variable. The Alter Type command changes the Variable Type of any variable in one short command—no need to write elaborate or unnecessary code…just one easy statement. As an example, the dataset below comprises 3 variables and 2 lines of data.
DATA LIST FREE
/Numvar (F2) StringVar (A5) Datevar (Adate10).BEGIN DATA
1 1234 10/28/2007 4 5678 10/28/2007
End data.
To change a numeric variable to a string (alphanumeric) variable, the command is:
To change a string (alphanumeric) variable to a numeric variable, the command is:
Alter Type Stringvar (F6.0).
To change a date variable to a string variable, the command is:
Alter Type Datevar (A10).
One note of caution: The Alter Type command does not allow you to create a new version of the variable. So you may want to save your data first or create a copy of the variable.
So, the next time you need to perform a calculations or merge data and the variable is not in the right Format or Type, use the Alter Type command. After all, it’s free, you are not crazy, and it’s cool!
A key feature of ALTER TYPE when applied to strings is that it can resize them to the minimum required to hold the data. Often string variables are overallocated to be sure that all the necessary data will fit. ALTER TYPE can recover that space. Most importantly, when you are running in Unicode mode and read in a code page file (the traditional character set representation prior to Unicode), string field width are tripled. This is necessary in order to guarantee that in Unicode there is room to hold all the characters. This is almost always too pessimistic. In fact, if the text is just plain ascii characters, the Unicode representation is the same size as the code page form. ALTER TYPE can painless fix the widths to conform to your actual data.
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Jon Peck
(designer of ALTER TYPE)
p.s., Because character sizes are different in Unicode and code page modes, it's a good idea to use the CHAR.* functions such as CHAR.LENGTH instead of the older functions, since the CHAR family of functions operate on characters, not bytes.