topic Re: Proc Export - Format issues in Csv file in SAS Programming

Proc Export - Format issues in Csv file

baskisb — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 09:57:03 GMT

Hi ,

Im using proc export with DBMS = csv and replace option and the email getting generated to outbound location.

But what i observed the the columns which has character values in SAS dataset ( for example : Classfication : 1,2,3 ( in char) ; Flag = 4,7,1 ( in char) ) those are changing as numeric when i open csv file on email.its automatically changing char to numeric as right alignment .

Could you please help in proc export how do we fix this , kindly help on this case.

Thanks

Venkat

Re: Proc Export - Format issues in Csv file

s_lassen — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 10:34:25 GMT

I think the problem is with whatever application you use to read the .csv-file. PROC EXPORT very nicely puts quotes around values like that, so it should be read as a single character value.

One workaround may be to change the delimiter to ';', if your application can understand that as a delimiter. Otherwise, use some other application to view the file.

Re: Proc Export - Format issues in Csv file

andreas_lds — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 11:05:27 GMT

Let me guess: you are using Excel to display the csv-file, right? Try using a text-editor, that has not the fancy habits Excel has.

Re: Proc Export - Format issues in Csv file

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 11:15:33 GMT

I ran this code

data have;
input var1 $ var2 $ var3;
datalines;
A 1,2,3 5
;

proc export
  data=have
  file="/folders/myfolders/have.csv"
  dbms=csv
  replace
;
run;

and got this in the file:

var1,var2,var3
A,"1,2,3",5

which is as it should be.

Opening the file with LibreOffice also resulted in a left-aligned string.

Re: Proc Export - Format issues in Csv file

Tom — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 12:53:28 GMT

@baskisb wrote:

Hi ,

Im using proc export with DBMS = csv and replace option and the email getting generated to outbound location.

But what i observed the the columns which has character values in SAS dataset ( for example : Classfication : 1,2,3 ( in char) ; Flag = 4,7,1 ( in char) ) those are changing as numeric when i open csv file on email.its automatically changing char to numeric as right alignment .

Could you please help in proc export how do we fix this , kindly help on this case.

Thanks

Venkat

A CSV file is jut plain text. It has no metadata about the type of data in contains (other than the optional header row).

What program are you using to view the CSV file? If it is Excel you need to do a little work to tell it what data type to use for each column.