Problem importing text file

[AbuChowdhury]

Hi Experts,

My text files looks the following. When I am importing this file to SAS, then SAS file shows all variables in one column. How can I solve this?

PERMNO            DATE       CRSP     Return

10001                20040416   20839    -0.003487

10001                20040419   20840     0.051085

10001                20040420   20841    -0.087883

[Patrick]

By choosing the correct delimiter. Is it a TAB or 1 to n blanks? Are you using a data step or Proc Import?

Base SAS(R) 9.4 Procedures Guide, Third Edition

[AbuChowdhury]

I think this is 1 to n blanks. Using both data step and proc import shows all variables in one column.

[Tom · Accepted solution]

If your file is that simple then just write the data step to read.  If you use an importing tool it will have to guess at what variable types to use.

data want ;

   infile 'myfile' firstobs=2 truncover ;

  input PERMNO DATE CRSP Return;

  informat date yymmdd8.;

  format date yymmddN8. ;

run;

[AbuChowdhury]

Now it works. Thanks a lot to Tom, Reeza and Patrick.

[Reeza]

What does your code look like?