Importing many txt files with differant layouts all in once

[srdhoble]

Hi Team,

               My requirement is to import many .txt files each with differant layout all at once.And to save them as sas datasets in work library.Can someone please help me on this.Thanks!

NOTE:I cannot make copy of files and store them in one temp location.File sizes are huge

[Reeza]

You can write a macro.

How do you know where the files are? Do you have a list, all in a folder?

http://www.sas.com/content/dam/SAS/en_ca/User%20Group%20Presentations/Victoria-User-Group/Macros-for...

[PGStats]

Where/How is the layout of your text files described?

[srdhoble]

These are pipe delimited .txt files. and all of them are distributed over 4 folder locations.

[Reeza]

1. Can proc import work or will you need a customized data step for each file?

If proc import works you can try and automate it.

[srdhoble]

Automating Proc import would be fine with me...any idea how to go about it?

[Reeza]

The first link I provided is a step by step instruction on how to do exactly that.

[Reeza]

 You can use a script to determine all the files in the folder (Assuming Windows);

http://support.sas.com/kb/45/805.html

Once those are in a dataset you can call the import macro using call execute.

%macro import_text_file(path, out);
proc import data=&out datafile="&path" dbms=dlm;
delimiter='|'; getnames=yes;
run;

%mend;