FORMATS Subcommand (GET SAS command)

FORMATS specifies the file containing user-defined value labels to be applied to the retrieved data.

  • File specifications should be enclosed in quotation marks.
  • If FORMATS is omitted, no value labels are available.
  • Value labels are applied only to numeric integer values. They are not applied to non-integer numeric values or string variables.
  • The file specified on the FORMATS subcommand must be created with the SAS PROC FORMAT statement.
  • For SAS transport files, the FORMATS subcommand is ignored.

Example

GET SAS /DATA='/data/elect.sas7bdat' DSET(Y1948)
 /FORMATS='data/formats.sas7bcat'.
  • Value labels read from the SAS catalog file formats.sas7bcat are converted to conform to IBM® SPSS® Statistics conventions.