Basic Concept

[Sanchit_goyal]

I have the following the DATASET, I have put 2 spaces between the values of ID & Date and Date & Flag. I am not getting the desired result but the year (i.e. 16 is getting assigned to the FLAG variable) WHEREAS if I am putting only 1 space between ID & Date and Date & Flag then my answer is as desire. Please explain why this is happening.

data readin ;
input id date ddmmyy8. flag $ ;
format date ddmmyy8. ;
cards;
1  30/12/16  Y
1  30-08-17  N
1  31-08-18  N
2  30-06-16  Y
2  31-12-18  N
;run;

[Kurt_Bremser · Accepted solution]

You are using formatted INPUT, but you have columns that are separated by a delimiter (blank). For this, you need list INPUT.

To use list input with informats, you need to use the colon modifier on the informats:

data readin;
input id date :ddmmyy8. flag $;
format date ddmmyy8.;
cards;
1  30/12/16  Y
1  30-08-17  N
1  31-08-18  N
2  30-06-16  Y
2  31-12-18  N
;