Hi:
SAS file references and file names have strict rules about what a valid SAS name can be. For example, this is a valid column or variable name: AGE_GROUP_1 however 1_AGE_GROUP is an invalid name because it starts with a number and SAS names cannot start with numbers. Valid SAS names can ONLY contain numbers, letters and underscores (spaces not allowed) and must start with a letter or underscore. So this would also be a valid variable or column name: _1_AGE_GROUP.
However, due to the fact that some systems do allow special characters or spaces in a name, for example, SAS also allows you to use "name literals" tokens or strings to reference variables. Some references are:
http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lrcon/62955/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a000998953.htm
http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/acreldb/63647/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a001392879.htm
For example, as a name literal, it shows in the documentation that you could read in a column or variable with a name of [pre] '$ Amount Budgeted'n or 'Amount Spent'n [/pre] Note that in this syntax construction the whole string is quoted and is immediately followed by an
n, which indicates that the string is a name literal.
You might want to open a track with Tech Support for more thorough help on this issue, they can look at all your code and your operating system configuration and make specific recommendations.
cynthia
