SAS Proc SQL string truncation issue - sql

Question

Have the creation of a simple table from values in another table below:
create table summary3 as
select
substr(&Start_dt.,1,4) as time_range,
NFDPs ,
NFDPExceeds,
NblkExceeds,
NFDPExceedsLT30s as NFDPExceedsLT30,
NReports as Nbr_report ,
prcnt_FDP_ext ,
prcnt_blk_ext ,
prcnt_extLT30 as prcnt_ext_LT30,
prcnt_report,
monotonic() as id
from OAP_exceedances_by_year;
my problem is arising on the very first column i created, time_range. When i try adding values to this table later on, I noticed that this column is capped to char's of length 4 or shorter, and it automatically truncates anything greater. Is there a way I can either change that first statement, or perhaps my future insert / set statements to avoid the truncation? IE i still want the first row to only be 4 characters but I may need future rows to be more.
Thanks!

Answer 1

This depends on how you do your future processing. If your data step later on says
data summary_final;
set summary3;
time_range = "ABCDEF";
run;
Then you could just change it like so:
data summary_final;
length time_Range $6;
set summary3;
time_range = "ABCDEF";
run;
But you certainly could do what you say also in the initial pull. For example...
proc sql;
create table namestr as
select substr(name,1,4) as namestr length=8
from sashelp.class;
quit;
That creates namestr as length=8 even though it has substr(1,4) in it; the names there will be truncated, as the substr asks it to, but future names will be allowed to be 8 long.