topic Re: knowing SAS variables length in SAS Enterprise Guide

knowing SAS variables length

jimksas — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 20:58:19 GMT

please help...

i have 100k obs datasets with 8 variables (reading from raw data file) and wants to know real length before it arrives into SAS (real length of raw data) How can i do that using sas code? I am not sure if PROC IMPORT wizard gives me correct length from raw file because have some field with leading zeros length more than 8 and by default import wizard is showing length 10 only....

Re: knowing SAS variables length

Tom — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 21:27:05 GMT

Read them in and figure it out.

%let nvars=8 ;

data lengths ;

length varnum 8 name $32 length 8 value $30000;

array names (&nvars) $32 ;

array lengths (&nvars) ;

infile "myfile.csv" dsd truncover lrecl=30000 end=eof ;

do varnum=1 to &nvars;

input name @ ;

names(varnum) = name ;

end;

input;

do until (eof);

do varnum = 1 to &nvars;

input value @;

lengths(varnum)=max(lengths(varnum),length(value));

end;

input;

end;

do varnum=1 to &nvars;

name=names(varnum);

length=lengths(varnum);

output;

keep varnum name length;

end;

run;

Re: knowing SAS variables length

jimksas — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 16:54:19 GMT

Tom - i tried to run your code with my file in your infile statement - it is giving me;

- 3 variables : varnum/name/length

- only one value for name variable (only 1st obs)

- 43 length value for 1st obs - all rest obs has same value which is 1