opening a sas dataset with invald sas name

[AllenJ]

Attempting to use an externally supplied SAS dataset and get the following messages.

NOTE: Data file NC1.REF_ITMSTATSREAD5_O.DATA is in a format that is native to another host, or the file encoding does not match
the session encoding. Cross Environment Data Access will be used, which might require additional CPU resources and might
reduce performance.
73 run;

ERROR: The value 'TDS Item ID'n is not a valid SAS name.
NOTE: Statements not processed because of errors noted above.

Need help reading or deleteing the 'TDS Item ID'.

Thanks,

[PaigeMiller · Accepted solution]

Try running this command and then seeing if you can read the data set

options validvarname=any;

In the future (that's 100% of the time in the future) do not show us parts of the log and fail to show us other parts of the log; in the future (that's 100% of the time in the future) do show us the entire log for this step so we can see the code as it appears in the log, plus any NOTEs, WARNINGs and ERRORs.

[AllenJ]

Thanks, that works.

[SASKiwi]

Please update your post as answered in that case.

[Kurt_Bremser]

Please post the complete log of the failing step, so we can see what you try to do and where exactly the proplem happens.

Use tge </> button to open a code box where you can paste the log text.

[Tom]

You have to tell SAS to allow use of non-standard names by changing the value of the VALIDVARNAME option.

options validvarname=ANY;

Then you could reference such names using name literals.

It will probably make your coding a lot easier if you go ahead and make a copy of the dataset where the variable names are renamed to valid SAS names.

data want;
  set NC1.REF_ITMSTATSREAD5_O;
  rename 'TDS Item ID'n=TDS_item_id ;
run;