Filling Row of Table Leading Periods?

[tburus]

I am trying to create a table of contents and would like to style it as in the picture below. I can get part way there using a PICTURE format on the page number with FILL='.', but am limited to 16 leading periods. Is there a way to get a row to fill all leading/trailing space with periods, or some other way to make a horizontal row of periods?

[ChrisNZ]

It seems to me that the issue is the calculation of the number of dots to add, since the font is proportional rather than with a fixed pitch. 

[tburus]

I'm not sure I understand your comment. Do you mean calculating how many trailing dots I would need after the strings? I can't find any way around the limitation on leading dots with the current set up I'm using.

[Amir]

Hi,

If you know or can calculate how many periods are required then would the repeat() function be of any help?

https://documentation.sas.com/?docsetId=lefunctionsref&docsetTarget=p0p9jw1m2698fvn1ljrnc8b6gij6.htm...

Kind regards,

Amir.

[RichardDeVen]

How is the table of contents created ?

Are you using ODS PDF option CONTENTS=yes ?

This example generates a TOC with dot fills:

ods _all_ close;

ods pdf file='report.pdf'
  contents=yes
;

proc print data=sashelp.class;
proc report data=sashelp.class;
run;

ods pdf close;

[tburus]

Thank you, I know. But I can't find a way to get that ToC to appear after the cover page, and I would need to style it and tag everything appropriately, which would be a lot more work than what I'm doing.

[RichardDeVen]

Do you have any working code that comes even reasonably close ?  Are you able to share any of it ?  What code is being used to create the pdf ? Which procedures ? PRINT/REPORT/TABULATE/SUMMARY/UNIVARIATE/SGPLOT/SPC/GMAP, etc...?  ODS TEXT statements? DATA step ODSOUT component objects ? Proc ODSTEXT ?

[tburus]

I'm using ODS PDF to output. My document contains PROC REPORT, PROC TABULATE and PROC SGRENDER. I tried dummying a row of ... into a PROC REPORT by defining a column called 'dots' where I said,

compute dots;
dots = repeat('.', 500);
endcomp;

But it didn't like this (threw an error and converted to numeric) and only printed a single dot.

[RichardDeVen]

The REPORT documentation is your friend .

COMPUTE Statement
<>

Computed character columns have a max length of 200.

You want

compute dots / character length=200
dots=repeat('.',199);
endcomp;