Big thanks to all of you (Art, Patrick and KSharp)! As a weekend SAS learner, I can't tell you enough how nice it is to get expert volunteer help here.
There are two blanks in the raw data between City and State. But thanks to Art for trying to find a way to address the "what if there is only one blank" question. I simply typed up the raw data example as what was showing on my SAS book. Patrick has a great point that there are probably blanks padded after the address values in the raw dataset used by the book. (Obviously I couldn't tell by reading the hardcopy. And I suspect most readers do not try to replicate the examples from an exam prep book, so I don't blame the author. 🙂
In a nutshell, I tested the truncover idea, it worked great! Then I went back to the raw data and padded additional blanks in the address line. After this modification, the column input worked (without Truncover).
It has been a good lesson for me. Cheers.
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