1 Color in 16.7 million

SAS / Graph and other applications use hexidecimal (base 16 or hex) values for colors. A single hex digit (1/2 an octet) can contain 16 values using 0 thru 9 then A (10) thru F (15). A byte can handle 256 colors (0 to 255 decimal or 00 to FF hex). A red, green, blue (RGB) primary color triplet (24 bit) can handle 16,777,216 colors as can be seen here:

data _null_ ;
  color1 = 16 ** 2 ;
  color3 = color1 ** 3 ;
  put ( color: ) ( @5  = comma10. / ) ;
run ;

    color1=256
    color3=16,777,216

If you need to obtain a specific computer color, you can do that using Microsoft Paint by following these steps:

1. Press Alt-PrintScreen to capture the screen
2. Start MS Paint and paste (control-V) the image
3. Click on the Color picker (eye dropper symbol)

4. Click on the desired color
5. Click on Edit Colors to see the decimal values

In this exmaple the returned decimal RGB values are 106, 89, 59. The following SAS macro function will convert the decimal RGB values to a SAS color hex (CX) value.

%macro rgbtohex( r, g, b ) ;
 CX%sysfunc(putn(&r.,hex2.))%sysfunc(putn(&g.,hex2.))%sysfunc(putn(&b.,hex2.))
%mend ;

%put %rgbtohex( 106, 89, 59 ) ;

CX6A593B