Reading data from external file in SAS

[Aexor]

Hello All,

I have below requirement

In a external file I have data like 

Sam,[email protected] ,abc 

22/09/1992,Math

Ram,[email protected] ,xyz

22/09/1993, English

I want to read data from this file and get output like  

Sam,[email protected] ,abc 22/09/1992,Math

Ram,[email protected] ,xyz22/09/1993, English

Please let me know the how can i solve this.

Thanks!

[Kurt_Bremser]

Can you be sure there's always two lines for a single person, in immediate succession?

[Aexor]

Yes.

Sam,[email protected] ,abc
22/09/1992,Math
Ram,[email protected] ,xyz
22/09/1993, English

[Kurt_Bremser]

Then you just need two INPUTs per data step iteration:

data want;
infile datalines dlm=",";
length
  name $10
  email $50
  whatever $3
  date 4
  course $15
;
format date ddmmyy10.;
input name email whatever;
input date:ddmmyy10. course;
datalines;
Sam,[email protected] ,abc 
22/09/1992,Math
Ram,[email protected] ,xyz
22/09/1993, English
;

[andreas_lds · Accepted solution]

Or one input-statement with the / (means: start reading next line)

data want;
infile datalines dlm=",";
length
  name $10
  email $50
  whatever $3
  date 4
  course $15
;
format date ddmmyy10.;
input name email whatever / date:ddmmyy10. course;
datalines;
Sam,[email protected] ,abc 
22/09/1992,Math
Ram,[email protected] ,xyz
22/09/1993, English
;

[FreelanceReinh]

You could even omit the slash because the default behavior of the INPUT statement is to read the remaining values, if any, from the next line (see Reading Past the End of a Line) -- at the cost of an additional note in the log:

NOTE: SAS went to a new line when INPUT statement reached past the end of a line.

[Tom]

Let's put your example lines into a file:

options parmcards=old;
filename old temp;

parmcards4;
Sam,[email protected] ,abc 
22/09/1992,Math
Ram,[email protected] ,xyz
22/09/1993, English
;;;;

Do you want to generate a new text file without the extra line break?

filename new temp;
data _null_;
  infile old;
  file new;
  input ;
  put _infile_ ',' @;
  input;
  put _infile_;
run;

Results:

Sam,[email protected] ,abc,22/09/1992,Math
Ram,[email protected] ,xyz,22/09/1993, English

Or did you want to read the file into a SAS dataset?

We can just read it and SAS will automatically jump to the next line when it runs out of values on the first line.

data want;
  infile old dsd ;
  input name :$20. email :$200. other :$20. date :ddmmyy. department :$20. ;
  format date yymmdd10.;
run;

image.png

Or we could tell it when to move to a new line.  In that case you might want to add the TRUNCOVER option to prevent if from moving too soon.

data want;
  infile old dsd truncover ;
  input name :$20. email :$200. other :$20. / date :ddmmyy. department :$20. ;
  format date yymmdd10.;
run;

or

data want;
  infile old dsd truncover ;
  input #1 name :$20. email :$200. other :$20. #2 date :ddmmyy. department :$20. ;
  format date yymmdd10.;
run;

or even

data want;
  infile old dsd truncover ;
  input name :$20. email :$200. other :$20.;
  input date :ddmmyy. department :$20. ;
  format date yymmdd10.;
run;

[Aexor]

This is awesome.
Thanks for explaining 🙂
My requirement was only to generate a new text file without the extra line break but I got to know many things. Thanks.