I'll start with the last question as it leads to the answer to the first. The $72. informat says that the last item read will be up to 72 characters long. Since the data is read in LIST format the first value, Y, only reads to the first space. If you take a look at which colomn the third column of data is in, 9, there are 8 columns used first and the likely defualt of 80 columns of data is read. When you switch to $73. then it tries to read column 9-81, exceeds the default length of 80 and skips to the next line. You probably have a line in the log that reads something like: SAS went toa new line when INPUT statement reached past the end of a line. That line tells you why you are getting def 789 101 for your first value of z, it went to the next line, it doesn't carry over the partial data from the previous line though. You don't get a second line becuase it reset to read x and y but when it started to read z it did the same thing but there was no data there so the read request couldn't complete. You don't say which version of SAS you are running but in my case, SAS 9.2.3, I get this from reading and printing data73 Data73 Obs x y z 1 abc 123 2 def 789 3 ghi 121 Notice that I have no values for z
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