How to delete or remove previously assigned formats and informats completely from the SAS dataset:

How to delete previously assigned formats and informats completely from the SAS dataset:

PROC DATASETS lib=work;
MODIFY dsn;
FORMAT _all_;
INFORMAT _all_;
RUN;
QUIT;

*work is the library name;
*mention the name of the SAS dataset, whose formats and informats needs to be removed in the MODIFY statement;
* format _all_ will delete all the formats in the SAS dataset.

*If you want to remove formats and informats for specific variables from the dataset, you can do that using PROC DATASETS and here is how?

*The following code will remove only the formats and informats of specific variables in the SAS dataset.

Proc DataSets Lib = Work;
Modify dsn;
Format heigt weight sex;
Run ;
Quit ;

*If we want to delete formats/informats of all character or numeric varibles, here is the way to do it;

**The following code will remove formats and informats for all the character variables in the SAS dataset.
proc datasets lib=work;
modify dsn;
format _char_; *format _num_;
run;
Quit;

********************************************************************************;
Another way to achieve same result is to use datstep with a SET statement and format/informat statements; In this method the order of SET, FORMAT and INFORMAT statements or important. Always follow the same order.

*The following code will remove all the formats and informats in the SAS dataset.
data dsn;
set dsn;
FORMAT _all_;
INFORMAT _all_;
run;

Using the datastep with the SET statemnt, we can also delete the formats and or informats of variables specifically from the SAS dataset.

*The following code will remove only the formats and informats of specific variables in the SAS dataset.
data dsn;
set dsn;
Format heigt weight sex;
INFORMAT weight sex;
run;