topic Is it possible to import a .data file into SAS in SAS Data Management

Is it possible to import a .data file into SAS

rbolanos — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 17:34:12 GMT

I was given three data sets in .data format. Is it possible to import these into SS without converting them first?

Thank you!

Re: Is it possible to import a .data file into SAS

ballardw — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 17:38:21 GMT

Are these files text or some sort of binary format?

If could post a few rows of the data in a code box opened using the forum's {i} menu icon we may be able to provide examples of what ot look for in the way of options.

If the data is in a proprietary data format such as some program uses it may be tricky but many text based file formats aren't much of an issue.

Re: Is it possible to import a .data file into SAS

rbolanos — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 17:48:21 GMT

I believe its text. When I open it in a newer version of excel it gives me the options of creating spaces between the data and when you do that it looks like this:

Re: Is it possible to import a .data file into SAS

Tom — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 18:03:15 GMT

Excel will probably transform the data. Better to just write a simple data step to dump a few records to the log.

data _null_;
  infile 'myfile.data' obs=5 ;
  input;
  list;
run;

Re: Is it possible to import a .data file into SAS

ballardw — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 19:25:52 GMT

If you had to indicate where to break the values the data might be fixed column, in which case if you have a description document for the file SAS can read it fairly easily.

Or possibly delimited with tab, comma or similar character separating the values, which SAS cal also.

I would be very careful letting Excel hand a file as under a number of cases the value of cells saved in Excel can be different than intended.

I have seen Excel turn account numbers such as 123-456 into either arithmetic results or dates depending on the values of the numbers.