input statement

[alep92]

Hi,

I use SAS Studio. I made a mistake and I wrote a number instaed of an informat in the input statement.

The program is this:

data ex.dat1;
input@1 dep 2. @4 num 2;
datalines;
34 10
;
run;

Why does the output dataset is this?

34      4

Thanks,

Alessandro

[Astounding · Accepted solution]

Consider that the INPUT statement could have specified a range of columns:

input dep 1-2 num 4-5;

When a field occupies a single column, you don't need to specify:

input field 2-2;

Just this is enough to request that SAS take the value from column 2 of the incoming line of data:

input field 2;

That's what you're seeing.