Reading multiples lines into one record from text file

japfvg — Mon, 23 May 2022 20:33:50 GMT

Dear experts:

I have this issue, I have a text file with info like the following (unstructured data):

Report Title Report Subtitle Dates, etc, etc xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy ------------------------------------------------------- A0100 Info about something important that is needed to capture zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ..................................................................

The information I'm looking for is located after the "A0100" and continues for the next 2 lines ("Info about something important that is needed to capture"), sometimes it's 6 lines or 8 (it may vary) but the message always starts with the "A0100" and also starts at position 7 and ends at 31 and is needed in one field called "message" in one record.

If there is another message below, it will be in another record (same field).

Any ideas on how to get this?

Thanks in advance.

Kind regards!

FerV

Re: Reading multiples lines into one record from text file

Tom — Mon, 23 May 2022 21:18:21 GMT

Read ahead.

As long as you can tell by looking at some part of the next line (or current line) that it is an continuation.

In your case is looks like the continuation lines have blanks in the first field so perhaps something like this.

data want;
  infile 'myfile.txt' truncover end=eof;
  length id $5 rec 8 fullstring $300 ;
  input id $5 fullstring $100. ;
  do rec=1 by 1 until (eof or _infile_^=: '     ');
    if not eof then do;
      input @@ ;
      if _infile_ ^=: '     ' then do;
        input @6 nextstring $100.;
        fullstring=catx(' ',fullstring,nextstring);
      end;
    end;
  end;
  drop nextstring;
run;

topic Reading multiples lines into one record from text file in SAS Programming

Reading multiples lines into one record from text file

Re: Reading multiples lines into one record from text file