Changed byte value solved this, but why? SAS: this range is repeated, or values overlap

My BI department just ran into the SAS error: this range is repeated, or values overlap.

I found some links they looked at and found that there was an error in a macro. The error was that the length of a numeric variable byte value was changed from 7 to 6 bytes created this error. Now when they changed it back to it's previous value everything is ok.

What is this behaviour all about? Are there some logic in this?

Solution

When reducing the length of a variable from 7 to 6 bytes, some numbers might get "truncated". 7 bytes can store integers up to 35,184,372,088,832 while 6 bytes can store only integers up to 137,438,953,472. Decimal numbers should always be length 8. See here for details.

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