_infile_ examples in data step

[BrahmanandaRao]

Hi experts i am confusing about _infie_ automatic variable can anyone give detailed explanation with example except sas documentation

[PeterClemmensen]

This is the article that made me understand it

https://www.lexjansen.com/nesug/nesug01/cc/cc4018bw.pdf

Hope it helps 🙂

[ballardw]

_infile_ basically holds the current entire line of an external file being read. So you can treat it much like any other string variable .

Brief example:

data example ;
   infile datalines truncover;
   input x $25.;
   put 'when read: ' _infile_;
   _infile_ = translate(_infile_,'X3L','1el');
   put 'when modified: ' _infile_;
datalines;
1 
some text
null
3
;

I have mostly used the variable for parsing badly structured files to find key lines in the data and executing condition Input statements.