topic Re: File mapping to table in SAS Programming

File mapping to table

FP12 — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 09:15:35 GMT

Hi all,

I theorically map a file to a SAS table but usually some data are not matching as it should.

For example:

NOTE: Invalid data for DT_ECH_LAST in line 287 151-158.

It's not so much important as I just need a part of the data in the following, and the part I need matches correctly.

But i still get a warning about it:

WARNING: Limit set by ERRORS= option reached.  Further errors of this type will not be printed.

I want to avoid two things:

1/ I read on Internet that if the number of non-matching data is superior to 50, the warning becomes an error. Is it true? How can I avoid it?

2/ I don't want the program to display the warning of this type, because in my program, it's kind of normal and it's not a warning. Can I do this?

Thanks

Kurt_Bremser — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 09:31:26 GMT

These warnings are NOT "normal". Tolerating such warnings is just a sign of sloppy/lazy programming. See my Maxims 22 & 25.

Read those values into character variables, and then do a conversion to numeric in a controlled way, selectively recognizing "valid missing" values.

That way you will be informed if you get unexpected data.

For more in-depth help, post your import code and some of the incriminating lines from the input file.

FP12 — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 09:52:02 GMT

Thanks Kurt,

In this case I prefer to extract only the useful part from my file. Like this, no more non-matching issue and no more warning.

Yes I know it's a bit lazy way of doing it, but why doing more? ^^

Shmuel — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 10:18:09 GMT

Your log message is:

Invalid data for DT_ECH_LAST in line 287 151-158.

it means that somewhere in your reading file program, you have a line like:

input ...  151-158 DT_ECH_LAST ...

if you don't need this variable you can skip reading it, than you shall not get the warning message at all.

About your question (1) - you can manage how many warnings will be displayed in log by OPTIONS ERRORS=.

When count exeeds the option given, there will be no more warnings except an ERROR message at the end of the data step

log, but it is still treated as a warning.

I warmly suugest to use @Kurt_Bremser advise and correct your program to deal with missing value or other failure of data.