Help! How do I ttreat the underscore in these text files I'm reading?

[karen_e_wallace]

Thank you for help in advance!

I want to simply read in several text files that have the same format and in the same location.

The files have names like "Boston_M.txt", "Boston_F.txt", etc.

In a macro, I'm passing the city and gender variables - and that piece is resolving per the log.

However, my issue is what to do about the "_" in the text file names that separates the city and gender.

The log states:

ERROR: Physical file does not exist, /courses/d93a3ee5ba27fe300/c_8666/BostonM.txt.

Could someone suggest a modification in the infile statement as I cannot change the names of the original files.

%macro import_files (city, gender);

data &city&gender;

infile "/courses/d93a3ee5ba27fe300/c_8666/&city&gender..txt" dlm='_' TRUNCOVER;

INPUT ID 1-3 Race $4 State 6-8 ;

/* _infile_=translate(_infile_,'_','''');*/

/* _infile_=compress(_infile_," @%/.'?""");*/

run;

%mend import_files;

[JoshB · Accepted solution]

Your file name has the underscore in it.. so your infile statement should as well..  i.e.

infile "/courses/d93a3ee5ba27fe300/c_8666/&city._&gender..txt" dlm='_' TRUNCOVER;

That will resolve as /courses/d93a3ee5ba27fe300/c_8666/Boston_M.txt for your example.

As a side note, the dlm is a file delimiter internal to the file, it has no bearing on what delimits the filename. I haven't personally seen a file that was delimited internally by underscores, but that may be what you're working with.

[karen_e_wallace]

JoshB - thanks a million! That's so simple...still a SAS newbie 🙂