topic Re: Creating a SAS table from a Flat File in SAS Data Management

Creating a SAS table from a Flat File

MatthewKelley — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 17:59:05 GMT

I am trying to create a SAS table from a flat file while excluding headers. Currently I have set the writer to start on line two. However it still pulls my headers from line one.

Is there an easy solution to creating a SAS table from a flat file without reading in headers?

Re: Creating a SAS table from a Flat File

art297 — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 18:52:09 GMT

One suggestion: bypass the import task and simply submit the desired code. e.g., if it's 3 numeric columns:

data want;
  infile '/folders/myfolders/testdata.txt' firstobs=2;
  input col1-col3;
run;

Art, CEO, AnalystFinder.com

Re: Creating a SAS table from a Flat File

Reeza — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 19:31:57 GMT

Are you using DI Studio or SAS Base?

If you're using SAS BASE you can try the datarow option in PROC IMPORT or FIRSTOBS in a data step.

http://documentation.sas.com/?docsetId=proc&docsetTarget=p08ss3c3xtt2qzn1fsma45gyz333.htm&docsetVersion=1.0&locale=en

Re: Creating a SAS table from a Flat File

Patrick — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 20:29:50 GMT

@MatthewKelley

If you're using SAS DI Studio then you need to define the first line to be read on the External File object as shown below.

Re: Creating a SAS table from a Flat File

Tom — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 04:11:19 GMT

Do you mean that you want to ignore the variable names in the first row and have SAS just assign variable names?

Do you mean that your file doesn't have variable names in the first row?

Do you mean that SAS is trying the read the variable names in the first row as part of the data?

Or that you want to find the variable names in a later row? Perhaps you are reading from some type of report that has one or more report titles before the lines of data?

Re: Creating a SAS table from a Flat File

MatthewKelley — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 19:35:41 GMT

Thank you all, I got it to read in properly.