Reading Data with Varying Length

[proximo20]

When the length of strings are different we use $varyingw. What do we use when numeric values have varying length.

Ex.

code price size

aaa 3000 400
bbb 200 5000
ddd 50000 60

Thanks

 

[proximo20]

Actually the data does not have titles I assign them with the input command.

aaa 3000 400
bbb 200 5000
ddd 50000 60

 

[mdieckman]

http://www.tau.ac.il/cc/pages/docs/sas8/cms/z-length.htm

SAS numbers are stored in bytes. If you are using an import statement:

a char would be

$16.

a number would be:

8.

 

[mdieckman]

$16. if you wanted a 16 character variable. 8. means 8 bytes.

 

[proximo20]

Thanks again Mdieckman! My problem is this

I got this data

XYZAA 20080721 2 1420 10022 A N N
XYZAA 20080721 2 1421 11001 A N N
XYZAA 20080721 2 1421 9877 A N N

I need to give them titles so I use this:

INPUT code $ 1-5 date 7-14 session 16 hour 18-21 price 6. type $ 29 market $ 31 correction $ 33;

My problem is that the input statement reads the price values 10022 and 11001 but it does not read 9877 and gives error for that line. When I use 5. then it reads the values as 1002, 1100(instead of 10022 and 11001) and 9877.

I tried to use : & and +1 but they don't work either.

I don't use export because the extension of files are .ts and I don't know what I should use for dbms=?

 

[proximo20]

Ok I got it. I am using two input statements, if price is bigger than 10000 and if it is less than.

 

[ChrisW75]

Alternatively this might work. Treat it as a space delimited file.

data test;
  infile blah recfm=v lrecl=2056 dlm=' ' missover;

  length code $5 
         date 8
         session 4
         hour 4
         price 6.
         type $1
         market $1
         correction $1;

  informat date yymmdd8.;

  input code
        date
        session
        hour
        price
        type
        market
        correction;
run;

Chris
Business Analyst, Code Monkey, Data Wrangler.
SAS Guru.