SAS automatically left-justifying input text line?

[DougZ]

When I read my input text line, SAS thinks it starts in column 1... but I need to write out another text file with the same indentation that was found in that input text file.

data test;
    infile cards;
    input line: $1-80;
    line_begn_posn = notspace(line);
    put line= line_begn_posn=;
    cards;
The xyz
    %mymacro
    myteststring
;
run;

[art297]

data test;
    infile cards;
    input @1 line $char80.;
    line_begn_posn = notspace(line);
    put line= line_begn_posn=;
    cards;
The xyz
    %mymacro
    myteststring
;
run;

Art, CEO, AnalystFinder.com

[DougZ]

Art - thanks. That works too.

[Reeza]

https://communities.sas.com/t5/General-SAS-Programming/Keep-leading-spaces-and-blank-records/td-p/17...

This works for me:

data test;
    infile cards;
    input @1 line $char80.;
    line_begn_posn = notspace(line);
    put line= line_begn_posn=;
    cards;
The xyz
    %mymacro
    myteststring
;
run;
 

[DougZ]

Reeza - this makes sense, not sure why I didn't use a $char80. - thanks for your solution!

[Astounding]

Once you read the value in with the leading blanks ($char80 informat), you can write it out the same way:

data test;
    infile cards;
    input line $char80.;

    put line $char80.;
    cards;
The xyz
    %mymacro
    myteststring
;

[DougZ]

Thanks to each of you who has posted a solution! 

[novinosrin]

data test2;
    infile cards ;
    input @;
    line=_infile_;
    cards;
The xyz
    %mymacro
    myteststring
;
run;

[DougZ]

That's great. Not sure why that works and my code did not.

[Reeza]

The link in my post has an explanation. 

[novinosrin]

@DougZ interesting question indeed.

1.Let me add some spice to the &char80. informat. Place a : (colon) if you were to read as modified list input coz not every record will have values of 80 chars. And in this case we go back to square losing our needed leading blanks 

2. ok, if we choose  to read with formatted input and NOT modified list input, you are running a risk of reading the next value supposing there are multiple vars to be read

3. Taking 1 and 2 makes this situation indeed tricky. Of course, this leads us to think of next options like $varying informat and use col= options and so on.