Keeping Trailing spaces in SAS dataset

[deleted_user]

Hi

I read in a text file eg.

filename indat 'C:\songs.txt';
infile indat delimiter=' ' missover length=reclen;

the format of the file is similar to

:3 4 Hi
:7 4 How

so the format is a ':', followed by a delimiter space ' ', followed by a numeric, delimiter space ' ', followed by a numeric, delimiter space ' ', followed by a character

However after the character there is often a trailing space ' ' which is not a delimiter but a part of what I would like to read into the SAS dataset. This ' ' always gets missed by the SAS input statement. How do I import this trailing space.

[sbb]

Hmm - you say you have a delimiter character (a blank-space) that is also part of a data-field, but only sometimes? Might there be more than 1, possibly 2 or more? Suggest you re-define the delimiter character as something other than your data or figure out a way to enclose your data values in quotation-marks.

But, still, what you are looking for is that SAS carry forward any imbedded (extra) blank in your character variable(s). SAS variables have a declared (or implied) LENGTH attribute and so you will have the padded-blanks stored as part of the variable -- but I suppose the question is to ask: what do you expect to do with those trailing blank characters?

Scott Barry
SBBWorks, Inc.

[deleted_user]

> figure
> out a way to enclose your data values in
> quotation-marks.
>

Hi thanks for your suggestion. I think if I enclose it in quotation marks, it might work.

So I'll have SAS reading in

: 3 4 Hi to
: 3 4 "Hi "

How do I tell SAS to read in everything between the quotation " marks in the input step?

Because I have to set the delimiter to a space ' ' I'm afriad SAS will input in

"Hi and " into different fields because it still thinks the space is the delimiter

[sbb]

Take advantage of the SAS support http://support.sas.com/ website either using its SEARCH facility or consider using a Google advanced search such as the one below:

infile reading delimited files quotation marks site:sas.com


Scott Barry
SBBWorks, Inc.

[DPraba79]

You can use QUOTE informat in order to read the Vaue which has enclosed by quotes.

[sbb]

Reading the data is not the real challenge - the OP wants to have SAS character variables retain any trailing spaces up to the declared SAS LENGTH definition (or the SAS default-assigned).

Scott Barry
SBBWorks, Inc.

[Cynthia_sas]

There is another issue in regard to trailing blanks. When you read in the data, you might work hard to read in the trailing blanks. However, consider this data:
[pre]
data muppets;
length On_show $15 Muppet $20;
infile datalines dsd dlm=',';
input On_show $ Muppet $ numtrail;
calclength = length(Muppet);
return;
datalines;
"Sesame Street","Kermit ",3
"Muppet Show","Miss Piggy ",1
"Sesame Street","Snuffleupagus ",2
"Muppet Show","Gonzo ",3
"Fraggle Rock","Gobo Fraggle ",4
"Fraggle Rock","Uncle Traveling Matt",0
;
run;
[/pre]

It's all very well to have trailing blanks explicitly included when the variable is read in. However, the LENGTH of the MUPPET variable will be $20. So it doesn't matter if Kermit has 3 trailing spaces or Miss Piggy has 1 trailing space -- they are individual variable VALUES, which will be internally stored with a maximum length of 20 characters.

If we use the LENGTH function to determine the number of characters in any given value for MUPPET, the LENGTH function -excludes- any trailing blanks and you see that the calculated length (if you run the program) shows only 6 as the length for what was read as "Kermit " (with 3 trailing blanks) and shows 10 as the length for what was read as "Miss Piggy " (with 1 trailing blank).

This is the output you get when you do a PROC PRINT of the data being read above:
[pre]
Variable and Calculated Length -- "trailing blanks" are ignored

Obs On_show Muppet calclength numtrail

1 Sesame Street Kermit 6 3
2 Muppet Show Miss Piggy 10 1
3 Sesame Street Snuffleupagus 13 2
4 Muppet Show Gonzo 5 3
5 Fraggle Rock Gobo Fraggle 12 4
6 Fraggle Rock Uncle Traveling Matt 20 0

[/pre]

And, if you look at the variable characteristics with PROC SQL, you see that the length of the variable is the maximum, or $20:
[pre]
Length as stored in the descriptor portion of the dataset

Column Column
Column Name Type Length
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
On_show char 15
Muppet char 20
numtrail num 8
calclength num 8

[/pre]

Since I don't understand WHY the trailing blanks are significant, and since I do understand how SAS deals with the LENGTH of character variables, I find myself wondering whether this is a moot question or some kind of important distinction for some other software, but a distinction which, in the end, doesn't really matter in SAS.

cynthia