period as missing character

[tradepeter]

Hello all:

  I want to read some characters into SAS from a text file. One record has a value '. ' which is a period followed by a space. However, SAS read treat it as missing. My understanding is that period is treated as missing for numeric but  not for character. So why this is the case and how to read a value like that as it is? For example, if this is my input file mydoc.txt:

a

.

b

this is my SAS:

data mydoc;
infile 'mydoc.txt';
input val$;

proc print data=mydoc;
run;

The result will be:

  obs val

  1      a
  2
  3      b

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Peter

[Hima]

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/basess/58133/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a001336075.htm

[Tom · Accepted solution]

You can use the $CHAR informat.

data check;
  input @1 x $1. @1 y $char1.;
  put x= y=;
cards;
.
run;
x=  y=.

[Haikuo]

Use $char informat:

data have;

input  var$char1.;

cards;

a

.

b

;

proc print;run;

Regards,

Haikuo