Proc Import Generates "Error" from CSV Import

[Tom]

You have discovered a bug (another bug) in PROC IMPORT.  It is triggered when using VALIDVARNAME=ANY and you have two non-standard names that are not unique in the first 32 bytes.

You can avoid it by setting the system option VALIDVARNAME=V7 .

Here is re-producible code to demonstrate the error.

options parmcards=csv;
filename csv temp;
parmcards;
This_name_is too_long_to_be_a_NAME1,This_name_is too_long_to_be_a_NAME2
1,Albert
2,Alice
;

options validvarname=v7;
proc import datafile=csv out=v7 dbms=csv replace ;
run;
options validvarname=any;
proc import datafile=csv out=any dbms=csv replace ;
run;
options validvarname=v7;

Or you could use a smarter tool to generate the code to read the file.  Like https://github.com/sasutils/macros/blob/master/csv2ds.sas

filename csv2ds url "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sasutils/macros/master/csv2ds.sas";
filename parmv url "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sasutils/macros/master/parmv.sas";
%include parmv;
%include csv2ds;
%csv2ds(csv,out=csv2ds,replace=1)

Which will try to make clearer variable names and much clearer SAS code.

      Files\_TD24420_AMRAPY3WVP0VKU0_\#LN00064.
1538 +data csv2ds;
1539 +  infile CSV dlm=',' dsd truncover firstobs=2 ;
1540 +  length This_name_is_too_long_to_be_a_NA 8
1541 +    This_name_is_too_long_to_be_a__1 $6
1542 +  ;
1543 +  label
1544 +    This_name_is_too_long_to_be_a_NA='This_name_is too_long_to_be_a_NAME1'
1545 +    This_name_is_too_long_to_be_a__1='This_name_is too_long_to_be_a_NAME2'
1546 +  ;
1547 +  input This_name_is_too_long_to_be_a_NA -- This_name_is_too_long_to_be_a__1 ;
1548 +run;

NOTE: The infile CSV is:
      Filename=C:\Users\ABERNA~1\AppData\Local\Temp\1\SAS Temporary Files\_TD24420_AMRAPY3WVP0VKU0_\#LN00063,
      RECFM=V,LRECL=32767,File Size (bytes)=92,
      Last Modified=12Jul2022:13:56:15,
      Create Time=12Jul2022:13:56:15

NOTE: 2 records were read from the infile CSV.
      The minimum record length was 7.
      The maximum record length was 8.
NOTE: The data set WORK.CSV2DS has 2 observations and 2 variables.