Lost value while importing with datastep and columns length

[moteku]

 Hello, in screen shot you can see that a value under "sex" column is missing, I have no idea what happened here, only I know is that "10240" is causing it. How to manage with that? I would like to get "10240" value under "type" column, and value "1" under "sex" column, the rest of rows should not change.

[japelin]

Try the following instead of the current input statement.

input type sex weight height;

You have specified 1-4 for type, but the next sex fails to read because the value is 5 digits.

[Tom · Accepted solution]

There is nothing in column 6 on the first line so SEX is read as missing.

You can fix the line by removing the space in column 5 and then SEX and the following values will be read right.  But you would need to read TYPE from column one thru five instead of one thru four.

Since your data is separated by spaces just use list mode input instead of column mode.

If you do have any missing values on a line then use a period to represent them so the list mode sees at least something to read for that field in the line and does get out of sync.  Use a period for either numeric or character variables. The normal informat for character variables will translate a single period into blank (missing) value.