Hi,

A character informat (type=J) can be used with a numeric variable in an input() function can be used to create a character variable containing numeric values.

A character informat (type=J) can also be used with a character variable in an input() function to create a character variable containing character values.

In this last instance, what is the benefit of using this method over a put() function having a character variable as first argument and a character format as second argument?
It there any specific scenario where it would give a different result?

proc format;
value $demo 'A'='ABC';
invalue $test 'A'='ABC';
run;

data x;
x='A';
y=input(x,$test.);
z=put(x,$demo.);
run;

proc print data=x;
run;