S370FPDw.d Informat

Reads packed data in IBM mainframe format.

Categories:	CAS
Categories:	Numeric
Interaction:	List input is incompatible with binary input when this informat is specified in an INFORMAT= statement or an ATTRIB= statement that uses the INFORMAT= argument. SAS issues a warning and uses formatted input to read the data.
Note:	Beginning in 2025.12, this informat supports the BIGINT data type when run in the DS2 language. Set BIGINTPROCESSING=YES to ensure that large integer values—stored as BIGINT—are displayed with full precision, up to 19 digits, without rounding or truncation. BIGINTPROCESSING=YES is recommended for large values that exceed 15–16 digits.

Table of Contents

Syntax

S370FPDw.d

Syntax Description

w

specifies the width of the input field.

Default	1
Range	1–16

d

specifies the power of 10 by which to divide the value. This argument is optional.

Default	0
Range	0–31

Details

Packed decimal data contains two digits per byte, but only one digit in the input field represents the sign. The last half of the last byte indicates the sign: a C or an F for positive numbers and a D for negative numbers.

Use S370FPDw.d to read packed decimal data from IBM mainframe files in other operating environments.

Comparisons

If you use SAS on an IBM mainframe, the S370FPDw.d and PDw.d informats are identical.

The following table compares the equivalent packed decimal notation by programming language:

Language	Packed Decimal Notation
SAS	S370FPD4.
PL/I	FIXED DEC(7,0)
COBOL	COMP-3 PIC 9(7)
assembler	PL4

Example

The variable in this example is a hexadecimal representation of a binary number that is stored in packed decimal form. Each two hexadecimal characters correspond to 1 byte of binary data, and each byte corresponds to one column of the input field.

data _null_;
   a=input('12345F'x,s370fpd3.);
   put a=;
run;

data _null_;
   a=input('12345F'x,s370fpd3.);
   put a=;
run;

SAS writes the following output to the log:

a=12345

Last updated: April 8, 2026