topic Re: Trim function or something else in SAS Procedures

Trim function or something else

Q1983 — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 21:33:38 GMT

data mydata(keep=name address city state zip phone email);

set data1;

run;

I am using a proc export

proc export data=mydata;

set mydata1;

File "/servername/report..txt"

Linesize=8000 dsd dlm='|';

run;

In some cases there may be a blank in one or more fields

Osborne 1313 E Main St Washington DC myemail@me.com (In this case we skipped the zip and phone number

In my proc export I am getting double || and sometimes I get what appear to be small boxes. The carraige returns are not working. The display should begin a new line after email however in some cases a new record will begin on the same line

Osborne 1313 E Main St Washington DC myemail@me.com Bradeley 1312 E Main

Would a trim function fix this in some way?

Re: Trim function or something else

ballardw — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 22:32:18 GMT

Likely not. The small boxes are usually unprintable characters. Proc export allows almost no control over the resulting output. You mention "carriage returns are not working". Did you try to embed them into the strings?

You get || because your delimiter is | and there is no data in that field. CSV and other delimited formats do the same thing, no data means sequential delimiters to ensure the number of columns are the same in each record.

You may want to post a few lines of input data and what you expect it to look like. Include some of the examples with blanks or other odd data.

A data _null_ step with put statements may be a solution.

Re: Trim function or something else

Tom — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 06:38:43 GMT

Are you trying to print mailing labels?

https://support.sas.com/documentation/onlinedoc/base/91/forms.pdf