Import txt files with difference variable sequnce and concatenate into one file

[RW9]

Whilst I normally advise against proc import, in this case it may be the easiest.  As for the file, you can pretty easily read it in and drop those line where first line="#".

Something like this:

data _null_;

     infile "xyz.txt";

     file "xyz.txt";

     input buffer $varying256.;

     if substr(buffer,1,1)="#" then delete;

     else put buffer;

run;

[Lin_Clare]

How to set the length variable after $varying in this case? sorry I am a SAS newbie. "input buffer $varying256.;" get an error as

ERROR: Variable name containing length expected after $VARYING

[RW9]

Well the point being is that you are not actually creating your dataset at this point.  The example is present to remove any lines with the first character being a hash:

data _null_;

  length buffer $2000.;

     infile "s:\temp\rob\a.txt";

     file "s:\temp\rob\a.txt";

     input buffer $;

     if substr(buffer,1,1)="#" then delete;

     else put buffer;

run;

The file a.txt has 3 rows to start, one with a hash as first character, after program is run there are only two rows.  The demonstrates how to remove the header information from your file.

[Lin_Clare]

It works, but still need to add some codes to do that for all the 80 files,output file name sepcified after file stament can not be the same as the input file after infile satment, otherwise the file will not be updated.

RW9, Thanks for you explains.