An example with Informat
DATA bins;
informat binnum f8. bin_desc $10.;
INPUT binnum bin_desc $ @@;
FORMAT bin_desc $10.;
DATALINES;
1 [-20,-15) 2 [-5,0) 3 [0,5) 4 [5,10) 5 [10,15) 6 [15,20) 7 [20,25) 8 [25,30) 8 [30,35) 10 [35,40)
11 [40,45) 12 [45,50) 13 [55,60) 14 [60,65) 15 [65,70) 16 [70,75) 17 [75,80) 18 [80,85) 19 [85,90)
20 [90,95) 21 [95,100) 22 [100,HI)
;
RUN;
A warning with Datalines: Sometimes you may have to specify the separator. That would be something like this if your values are separated by | characters (sometimes called a pipe).
infile datalines delimiter='|';
Another sneakier warning: If copying from some documents, word processor or spreadsheets being common culprits, you may have characters that you do not see that are used by those programs internally and your datalines can throw some odd errors. SAS is pretty good about telling you where something goes wrong but what may not be clear. If you see odd error or invalid data messages you may need to go to the data line with the error and delete what appears to be a space and then retype a space.
You can also use ATTRIB statement to describe variables before they are read to set information used for reading.
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