How can I read a file's entire contents without knowing its format?

[GrokAndRoll]

Assuming I have a plain-text file with contents in an unknown or inconsistent format:

• Could be spread over multiple lines, or not
• Could have commas, or not

How would I go about reading it into a single variable of a single observation? I just want a "text" variable to contain the entire contents.

Try as I might I can't write a program which will get me what I want - I hope that I'm missing something very simple.

Example text file:

[{"var1":"ses-

14_14723","var2":652720,"var3":653940}]

My SAS code so far.

data work.test;
     infile "C:\test.txt" flowover dlmstr="&(*&)(*&";
     input alltext :$ 3000.;
run;

As you can see -

• I've experimented using flowover to search for data on new lines.
• I'm using a delimiter string with a ridiculous value I'll never hit so that the third line isn't split, and
• I've chosen a randomly-high length for the alltext variable, but used the colon to tell the input statement the length could be variable

This strikes me as really hacky and I'm sure it can't be right. It also returns me 2 observations - one for line 1, and one for line 3.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[jakarman]

Well I hope you are aware what you are asking. Not knowing the format, is it video/audio and you want to build your own codecs?

Let me assume you are at least expecting character data in some encoding like Unicode and you are knowing just that type.

SAS(R) 9.3 Statements: Reference (infile)

SAS(R) 9.3 Companion for Windows (infile)

There is a limit that string variables cannot be longer as 32Kb. 

You can read the fie in binary format using: 

Recfm=N and than choose your char variables into splitting as an array (maximum size?) or as observations using reading in logicl blocks (reclen) of eg 32Kb.

The automatic _infile_ variable can be uses as the source after each "input ;" statement. An input statement not reading any variables.

Do you have a format using a record-layout (what is the maximum length)? You can use those record indicators.

These are the CR LF CRLF characters giving a basic format to the file.  

[SASJedi · Accepted solution]

Something like this perhaps?

/* Create a text file */
data _null_ ;
    file "s:\workshop\test.txt";
      set sashelp.class;
      put _all_;
run;

/*Read the whole text file into a text variable *
data test;
   length text $32767;
   retain text '';
   infile "s:\workshop\test.txt" flowover dlmstr='//' end=last;
   input;
   text=cats(text,_infile_);
   if last then output;
run;
proc print; run;

[GrokAndRoll]

SASJedi (if that is your real name :smileysilly:) - Thanks, that does the job perfectly.

Of course I concede I probably shouldn't be taking this approach, but it's interesting to know how it could be done. I must have read about the _infile_ variable in the past, but had forgotten it.

[jakarman]

@Grokandroll, SASjedi is of course Mark Jordan http://blogs.sas.com/content/sastraining/?s=sasjedi

Creating json: Base SAS(R) 9.4 Procedures Guide, Second Edition (proc json)

The json data processing is a possible enhancement as alternative for XML.

http://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings13/296-2013.pdf is some same approach as you want.

[Tom]

Why?

[GrokAndRoll]

Tom - Partly to see if it's possible. The other reason was that I am writing a piece of SAS code to parse a JSON response, but my parser assumes that everything is on the same line. Turned out there were a couple of random new lines in there so I wanted to load up the file and prepare it for use by removing all new lines. I hoped there would be a way of loading all contents in one variable, running a tranwrd or compress function against it, and voila.

I realise the answer is probably "Don't do that" but I was curious.