topic Use column pointers and informat in SAS Programming

Use column pointers and informat

Ronein — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 04:44:29 GMT

Hello

I saw this code.

May anyone explain please why do they use informat $12.? (why not $10 for example)?

May anyone explain please why do they use input pointers +4 and +6?why not other numbers?

I see that var name has maximum 9 digits

I see that var score1 has 5 digits(included comma)

I see that var score2 has 5 digits(included comma)

data scores;
   input name $12. +4 score1 comma5. +6 score2 comma5.;
   cards;
Riley           1,132      1,187
Henderson       1,015      1,102
;
Run;

Re: Use column pointers and informat

andreas_lds — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 07:14:25 GMT

Someone should have written a record-description: a least a table describing the data to be found in a file matching the description. Without that description it is hardly possible to know why $12 has been used, maybe because the data will be merged using the name-variable and it has been defined with length=12 in the other dataset.

The +4 / +6 move the column-pointer to the first char of the variable.