I suspect that your question is triggered by confusion between using formatted input and list mode input when writing your INPUT statement rather than the TRUNCOVER option of the INFILE statement. Take a look at this page:  SAS(R) 9.2 Language Reference: Concepts, Second Edition The description of LIST INPUT style could use a little clarification: The example INPUT statement has an unneeded $.  Because the variable has already been defined there is no need to include the $ in the INPUT statement. The statement about blanks not representing a missing value only applies when you are using blank as your delimiter. Also look at the effect of modifiers such as & that are mentioned in the MODIFIED LIST INPUT style section. They do not explain how the defined INFORMAT impacts the type data that can be read.  If you have defined an INFORMAT for your variables then you can read them with LIST INPUT style and the informat assigned to the variables in the list will automatically be read. ... View more

The LENGTH statement is a method for defining your variables. You can also use the ATTRIB statement. Once you have defined your variables the INPUT statement is much easier to write.  In fact you can even use variable lists as in the example below. The TRUNCOVER option will allow the INPUT statement to handle lines when the last value is empty, or even if there are not enough delimiters on the line.  For example see how I changed the next to last line of input data. Your example data looks like a normal CSV file. So you should use the DSD option. data want ;   infile cards dsd truncover ;   length      Employee_ID 8      First_Name $ 12      Last_Name $ 18      Gender $ 1      Salary 8      Job_Title $ 25      Country $ 2      Date1 8      Date2 8   ;   informat date1 date9. date2 mmddyy10. ;   format date1 date2 yymmdd10.;   input Employee_ID -- Date2 ; cards; 120102,Tom,Zhou,M,108255,Sales Manager,AU,11AUG1973,06/01/1993 120103,Wilson,Dawes,M,87975,Sales Manager,AU,22JAN1953,01/01/1978              120121,Irenie,Elvish,F,26600,Sales Rep. II,AU,02AUG1948,01/01/1978 120122,Christina,Ngan,F,27475,Sales Rep. II,AU,27JUL1958,07/01/1982 120123,Kimiko,Hotstone,F,26190,Sales Rep. I,AU,28SEP1968,10/01/1989 120124,Lucian,Daymond,M,26480,Sales Rep. I,AU,13MAY1963            120125,Fong,Hofmeister,M,32040,Sales Rep. IV,AU,06DEC1958,03/01/1983 ;;;; ... View more

They are not really even related. The TRUNCOVER (vs FLOWOVER) option sets how SAS behaves when you read past the end of the line. The LENGTH option lets you tell SAS what variable to populate with the length of the line. You could conceivably generate some customized logic using the values of the variables specified by the LENGTH and COLUMN options to control when to move to another line, but 99.9 % of normal data input would not require that. ... View more

Can you create a table in the SQL database to store the list? Otherwise you might be better off using the SAS dataset to generate WHERE clauses against the large table. Here is an example. You might have to adjust if your ID variable is character or if it is too long to fit 1000 values into a single macro variable. proc sql noprint ;   select distinct id into :idlist1 separated by ',' from id_list (firstobs=1 obs=1000) ;   select distinct id into :idlist2 separated by ',' from id_list (firstobs=1001 obs=2000) ;   create table NEW as select * from A.BIGTABLE   where id in (&idlist1,&idlist2)   ; quit; ... View more

You can use wildcards on the INFILE statement. You will also want to use the FILENAME and EOV options on the INFILE statement. Here is a simple example. data _null_;   do file='one.txt','two.txt' ;     fname=catx('\',pathname('work'),file);     file out filevar=fname ;     do i=1 to 10; put i; end;   end; run; data want ;   length fname file $200;   infile "%sysfunc(pathname(work))\*.txt" eov=eov filename=fname;   input @;   if _n_=1 or eov then do;      input // i ;   file = scan(fname,-1,'\');     output;   end; eov=0; run; ... View more