The asterisks will appear when you use formatted printing when the numeric value is invalid for the format specification used. For example there is no way to represent values larger than 99 with only two digits. So if you print 123 using 2. format you will get **. And you will get a note in the log about it. Example:
368 data _null_;
369 x=123;
370 put x 2.;
371 run;
**
NOTE: At least one W.D format was too small for the number to be printed. The decimal may be shifted by the "BEST" format.
NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time):
real time 0.00 seconds
cpu time 0.00 seconds
In addition to the two notes you posted that show the number of observations read and lines written you should also see notes about how long the shortest and longest line was. Example:
345 data _null_;
346 file text;
347 set sashelp.class;
348 put name sex age ;
349 run;
NOTE: The file TEXT is:
Filename=xxx,
RECFM=V,LRECL=32767,File Size (bytes)=0,
Last Modified=13Nov2024:09:19:56,
Create Time=13Nov2024:09:19:56
NOTE: 19 records were written to the file TEXT.
The minimum record length was 9.
The maximum record length was 12.
NOTE: There were 19 observations read from the data set SASHELP.CLASS.
NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time):
real time 0.08 seconds
cpu time 0.03 seconds
Notice
The minimum record length was 9.
The maximum record length was 12.
How are you LOOKING at the text file? Since you are writing lines that over 200 bytes long if you just type the file to a terminal the lines will wrap.
Did you try reading it with SAS? Again note that SAS will display in the log the min and max lengths of the lines read from the file in addition to the number of lines. Did SAS find 11 lines when it read the file.
There are only two ways a single PUT statement (without / or # cursor motion commands) could write more than one line. Either the text being written includes line breaks. In that case you will only notice the difference when you read back in the file.
Or the lines being written are longer than the record length being used by the FILE statement which will cause the PUT statement to move to a new line. But that case you will see a different number of lines written than observations read when checking the LOG from the data step that wrote the file.
363 data _null_;
364 file text lrecl=30;
365 set sashelp.class(obs=3);
366 put name sex @35 age ;
367 run;
NOTE: The file TEXT is:
Filename=xxx,
RECFM=V,LRECL=30,File Size (bytes)=0,
Last Modified=13Nov2024:09:31:02,
Create Time=13Nov2024:09:31:02
NOTE: 6 records were written to the file TEXT.
The minimum record length was 2.
The maximum record length was 9.
NOTE: There were 3 observations read from the data set SASHELP.CLASS.
NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time):
real time 0.00 seconds
cpu time 0.00 seconds
