Proc export issues with free text column

[Sean_OConnor]

Good Afternoon,

I'm attempting to export a file created in SAS to an external database and one of the fields is a free text field which appears to be exporting some records to do lines.

An example of how some of the fields look is as follows.

""" See printout stored in ABC area
(if not found consult document) """

Is there a way to fix these issues prior to export in order to have one record per line?

Any help is welcome.

Sean 

[Tom · Accepted solution]

You can either replace the CR and/or LF characters in your string.  For example you might replace the LF's in the file with | character instead and then write that file to a CSV file.

data for_export;
  set have;
  array _c _character_;
  do _n_=1 to dim(_c);
      _c[_n_] = translate(_c[_n_],'|','0A'x);
  end;
run;

Or possibly use something like the macro mentioned here to write the CSV file with quotes around values that including them.

https://communities.sas.com/t5/SASware-Ballot-Ideas/Enhancements-to-INFILE-FILE-to-handle-delimited-...