How to export data in txt file with fixed length?

cokeyng — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 03:51:00 GMT

I have recently been asked to prepare some data in a txt file. The tricky part about this is that there is not delimiter between columns and text alignment some time has to be different. For example, a data set as below:

year quarter sin_no gender dob income

2012 Q1 123123123 M 19600103 87000

2013 Q1 123123123 M 19600103 103000

2013 Q1 123123156 F 19571020 130000

2014 Q1 123123789 F 19670912 90100

The data should be export as

2012Q1123123123M19600103 87000

2013Q1123123123M19600103 103000

2013Q1123123156F19571020 130000

2014Q1123123789F19670912 90100

I was doing my research and debating if I should use a data step or proc export to do the job.

Then, I found that the data step and the put statment should do the magic.

filename outtext "~\export_data.txt";

data _NULL_;

set to_export;

filename outtext;

put year @5 quarter @7 sin_no @16 gender @17 dob @25 income 9.-r;

run;

The only part that I am not able to figure out is the end of line. I would want to have CRLF even it is on a Unix envionment. Some post suggested using termstr=CRLF in the file statement, but when I check the documentation, the option is only available to the INFILE statement.

Any idea?

Re: How to export data in txt file with fixed length?

cokeyng — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 03:56:17 GMT

Tried out the TERMSTR=CRLF option and it works.
data _NULL_;
set to_export;
filename outtext termstr=crlf;
put year @5 quarter @7 sin_no @16 gender @17 dob @25 income 9.-r;
run;

topic Re: How to export data in txt file with fixed length? in SAS Programming

How to export data in txt file with fixed length?

Re: How to export data in txt file with fixed length?