Custom formats are used
to display variable values in certain ways, such as formatting a product
number so that it is displayed as descriptive text. You should already
be familiar with using the FORMAT procedure to create and store formats.
In this chapter you
learn to document formats, use formats located in any catalog, create
formats with overlapping ranges, and use the PICTURE statement to
create a format for inserting message characters into numbers. You
also learn an easy way to update formats by creating a SAS data set
from a format, updating the data set, and then re-creating the format
from the updated SAS data set.