The PHREG procedure issues errors when certain variables are used in programming statements


In PROC PHREG, if a character variable used in programming statements has a length longer than 8 bytes, messages such as the following are issued:

ERROR: An exception has been encountered.
Please contact technical support and provide them with the following traceback information:

The SAS task name is [PHREG]
Exception occurred at (0FF1E618)
Task Traceback

NOTE: The SAS System stopped processing this step because of errors.

To circumvent the problem, shorten the length of the character variable to a maximum of 8. Be sure the variable values are unique to the first 8 characters.