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.