topic Re: Preserve spacing when writing out a SAS file in SAS Programming

Preserve spacing when writing out a SAS file

nmasel — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 21:03:13 GMT

Hi,

I am reading in a SAS program and I lose all of the leading spaces when writing the file back out. Is there a way to preserve this spacing? I'm using SAS 9.4.

Here is my code to write out the file.

/**************************************************************************************************************
* Write out your program
**************************************************************************************************************/
filename final "C:\Users\nmasel\Downloads\tsfae01b_new.sas";

data _null_;
file final;
set addnew(keep=string);
put addnew;
run;

Here is an example of the contents of work.addnew:

data adsl;

set a_in.adsl(where=(&whr. and fasfl = "Y"));

trtan = coalesce(trt04an, trt03an, trt02an, trt01an);

if trtan = 1 then do;

output;

trtan = 2;

output;

trtan = 6;

output;

end;

else do;

output;

trtan = 6;

output;

end;

keep usubjid fasfl mribd trtan;

run;

--Nick

Re: Preserve spacing when writing out a SAS file

Astounding — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 21:23:17 GMT

It looks like the name of the variable being written should be STRING (not ADDNEW). But assuming that gets fixed ...

As you have seen, the PUT statement can remove leading blanks. You can specify to keep them, by adding that instruction as part of the PUT statement. Assuming that STRING has a length of 80 (and is the proper variable name), you could use:

put string $char80.;

That should preserve the leading blanks.

Re: Preserve spacing when writing out a SAS file

nmasel — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 21:26:24 GMT

Thank you!