Terminology
Where many other languages refer to tables, rows, and columns/fields, SAS uses the terms data sets, observations, and variables (although in some of the GUI applications, it is not consistent with these terms, sometimes referring to columns and rows). There are only two kinds of variables in SAS: numeric and character (string). By default all numeric variables are stored as (8 byte) real. It is possible to reduce precision in external storage only. Date and datetime variables are numeric variables that inherit the C tradition and are stored as either the number of days (for date variables) or seconds (for datetime variables).
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