How do I prevent a missing value from being skipped?

[WeenieHutJrs]

I have a long and complicated dataset in a .txt file where I can get it to read the dataset and get most of the data in the correct positions in the output. However there is one character variable that sometimes is missing in the .txt file and rather than having no value for that variable in the output, the next variable is just shifted into the missing variable's slot screwing up the remaining data. How do I prevent that from happening while only using where statements in the data step? (var5 is my problem variable and using SAS OnDemand)

Example code:

data dataset;
     infile example.txt dlm='09'x;
          input number var1 $ var2 var3 $ var4 $ var5 $ var6 $ var7 $ var8 $ var9 $ var10 $ @;
          drop number;
     run;

From example.txt file

1     xxx      1234     xxx     xxx          xxx     xxx     xxx     xxx     xxx
2     xxx      1234     xxx     xxx          xxx     xxx     xxx     xxx     xxx

3     xxx      1234     xxx     xxx     xxx     xxx     xxx     xxx     xxx     xxx

4     xxx      1234     xxx     xxx     xxx     xxx     xxx     xxx     xxx     xxx

5     xxx      1234     xxx     xxx          xxx     xxx     xxx     xxx     xxx

6     xxx      1234     xxx     xxx          xxx     xxx     xxx     xxx     xxx

Example output

var1  var2  var3  var4  var5  var6  var7  var8  var9  var10

xxx   1234   xxx   xxx   xxx    xxx    xxx   xxx   xxx    2

xxx   1234   xxx   xxx   xxx    xxx    xxx   xxx   xxx    xxx

xxx   1234   xxx   xxx   xxx    xxx    xxx   xxx   xxx    xxx

xxx   1234   xxx   xxx   xxx    xxx    xxx   xxx   xxx    6

[Kurt_Bremser · Accepted solution]

Add the DSD option to your INFILE statemeht. Two consecutive delimiters will then be read as a missing values.