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SAS Companion for the CMS Environment

Considerations for Using Formats under CMS

EBCDIC and Character Data

The following character formats produce different results on different computing platforms, depending on which character-encoding system the platform uses. Because CMS uses the EBCDIC character-encoding system, all of the following formats convert data from EBCDIC.

These formats are not discussed in detail in this section because the EBCDIC character-encoding system is their only host-specific aspect.

$ASCIIw.: converts EBCDIC character data to ASCII character data.
$BINARYw.: converts EBCDIC character data to binary values.
$CHARw.: writes standard character data.
EBCDICw.: converts native format character data to EBCDIC representation.
$HEXw.: converts EBCDIC character data to hexadecimal data.
$OCTALw.: converts EBCDIC character data to octal data.
VARYINGw.: writes varying-length character values.
$W.: writes standard character data.

All the information that you need in order to use these formats under CMS is included in SAS Language Reference: Dictionary.

Floating-Point Number Format and Portability

The manner in which CMS stores floating-point numbers can affect your data. See Representation of Floating-Point Numbers for details.

Writing Binary Data

If a SAS program that writes binary data is run on only one type of machine, you can use the following native-mode(footnote 1) formats:

IBw.d writes integer binary (fixed-point) values, including negative values, which are represented in twos complement notation

PDw.d writes data that are stored in the IBM packed decimal format

PIBw.d writes positive integer binary (fixed-point) values

RBw.d writes real binary (floating-point) data.

ZD writes zoned decimal data.

If you want to write SAS programs that can be run on multiple machines that use different byte-storage systems, then use the following IBM 370 formats:

S370FIBw.d: writes integer binary data in the IBM mainframe format
S370FIBU: writes unsigned integer binary data in the IBM mainframe format
S370FPDw.d: writes packed decimal data in the IBM mainframe format
S370FPDU: writes unsigned packed decimal data in the IBM mainframe format
S370FPIBw.d: writes positive integer binary data in the IBM mainframe format
S370FRBw.d: writes real binary data in the IBM mainframe format
S370FZD: writes zoned decimal data in the IBM mainframe format
S370FZDL: writes zoned decimal leading sign data in the IBM mainframe format
S370FZDS: writes zoned decimal separate leading sign data in the IBM mainframe format
S370FZDT: writes zoned decimal separate trailing sign data in the IBM mainframe format
S370FZDU: writes unsigned zoned decimal data in the IBM mainframe format.

These IBM 370 formats enable you to write SAS programs that can be run in any SAS environment, regardless of the standard for storing numeric data. They also enhance your ability to port raw data between host operating environments.

For more information about the IBM 370 formats, see SAS Language Reference: Dictionary.

FOOTNOTE 1: Native mode means that these formats use the byte-ordering system and floating-point representation which are standard for the machine.

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