topic period as missing character in SAS Procedures

period as missing character

tradepeter — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 14:39:28 GMT

Hello all:

I want to read some characters into SAS from a text file. One record has a value '. ' which is a period followed by a space. However, SAS read treat it as missing. My understanding is that period is treated as missing for numeric but not for character. So why this is the case and how to read a value like that as it is? For example, if this is my input file mydoc.txt:

this is my SAS:

data mydoc;
infile 'mydoc.txt';
input val$;

proc print data=mydoc;
run;

The result will be:

obs val

1 a
2
3 b

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Peter

period as missing character

Hima — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:17:42 GMT

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/basess/58133/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a001336075.htm

Re: period as missing character

Tom — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:24:18 GMT

You can use the $CHAR informat.

data check;
  input @1 x $1. @1 y $char1.;
  put x= y=;
cards;
.
run;
x=  y=.

period as missing character

Haikuo — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:25:59 GMT

Use $char informat:

data have;

input var$char1.;

cards;

;

proc print;run;

Regards,

Haikuo