topic Reading raw data separated by semicolons in SAS Programming

Reading raw data separated by semicolons

TedShelly — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 20:02:12 GMT

I have raw data consisting of a long string of numbers separated by semicolons. Like this:

1; 2; 3; 4; 5; …

I don’t know the number of values in advance.

I’d like to read these in using a data step and create one observation per value.

I’ve looked at several examples of using the input statement, but nothing works the way I would like it to.

Anyone have a suggestion?

data_null__ — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 20:09:21 GMT

You can use double trailing @ to read multiple obs from one record.

data a;
   infile cards4 dsd dlm=';';
   input v @@;
   cards4;
1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 
;;;;
   run;

Astounding — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 20:28:43 GMT

That's a good approach. You might find it necessary to include blanks as delimiters as well:

dlm='; '

TedShelly — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 22:59:39 GMT

This is very cool, thanks. I had forgotten all about @@.