topic Re: doubt in TRUNCOVER infile option in SAS in SAS Programming

doubt in TRUNCOVER infile option in SAS

Swapnas — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 08:08:08 GMT

hello,

I have learnt about TRUNCOVER option and worked with the below code without providing the option in INFILE statement

data sample;
length no $5.;
input no $;
datalines;
1
22
333
4444
55555
;
run;

i am expecting data like below for the variable "No" as i have not provided TRUNCOVER option in INFILE satatement

4444

55555

But to my surprise i am seeing data like this

333

4444

55555

I am not sure how this is working without providing TRUNCOVER option in the code

Please help me in understanding this

Re: doubt in TRUNCOVER infile option in SAS

RW9 — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 08:26:22 GMT

Truncover is not used anywhere in your post??

This code:

data sample;
length no $5.;
input no $;
datalines;
1
22
333
4444
55555
;
run;

Is basically saying, read a string from the datalines up until the first space (unless you change the delimiter) and put that in no before moving the pointer on. As there is one string per line you get one per output observations. Exactly as you have coded it, no truncover used anywhere?

Maybe this paper will help you:

http://www2.sas.com/proceedings/sugi26/p009-26.pdf

Re: doubt in TRUNCOVER infile option in SAS

Kurt_Bremser — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 10:37:55 GMT

One aspect of datalines is automatic padding to 80 characters. Any line in a datalines block that has less than 80 characters is automatically extended. So truncover is only needed with datalines if you want to read more than 80 characters, or you work with delimited data and have possible empty fields at the end of a line.