Specifying Informat on INPUT statement rather than INFORMAT statement

[pchappus]

I'm having issues with stating my informat on the input statment. If I just use an INFORMAT statement, it works and I get no errors/warnings. Does anybody know what the difference is in the following two statements?\

		DATA work.DATA1;
		INFILE "&Lnx_File"
			DELIMITER=','
			MISSOVER
			FIRSTOBS=2
			DSD
			LRECL=32767;

		INPUT
			Policy_Number	$
			Incurred_Date	
			Paid_Date	
			Amount_Paid_per_Claim
		;

		INFORMAT
			Incurred_Date	YYMMDD8.
			Paid_Date	YYMMDD8.
		;

		FORMAT
			Policy_Number	$9.
			Incurred_Date	MMDDYY10.
			Paid_Date	MMDDYY10.
			Amount_Paid_per_Claim	10.2
		;

The below code seems to be not reading in the data correctly and I get a ton of warnings and notes.

		DATA work.DATA1;
		INFILE "&Lnx_File"
			DELIMITER=','
			MISSOVER
			FIRSTOBS=2
			DSD
			LRECL=32767;

		INPUT
			Policy_Number	$
			Incurred_Date	YYMMDD8.
			Paid_Date	YYMMDD8.
			Amount_Paid_per_Claim
		;

		FORMAT
			Policy_Number	$9.
			Incurred_Date	MMDDYY10.
			Paid_Date	MMDDYY10.
			Amount_Paid_per_Claim	10.2
		;

[Cynthia_sas · Accepted solution]

Hi:
Read about the colon format modifer for the INPUT statement. If you are going to specify an INFORMAT on your INPUT statement, you need the colon format modifier, such as:
input ID $ Date : mmddyy.;

Cynthia