Column-binary data storage
compresses data so that more than 80 items of data can be stored on
a single “virtual” punch card.
The CB
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d informat
reads standard numeric values from column-binary files and translates
the data into standard binary format.
SAS first stores each
column of column-binary data that you read with CB
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d in
two bytes and ignores the two high-order bits of each byte. If the
punch codes are valid, then SAS stores the equivalent numeric value
in the variable that you specify. If the combinations are not valid,
then SAS assigns the variable a missing value and sets the automatic
variable _ERROR_ to 1.