Thank you. After further review of the file I discovered the columns that needed to contain a single blank space were actually place holders so the entire column was empty.  That made it a little easier since I did need to check if a value was present I just needed to output a black space in the file.  I used your recommendation and modified it to come up with something that worked in this case.  Thanks.   I used something along the following to get the output I needed. The 3rd column contains the single black space.: ata _null_; set ds.txns; file "C:\SASDocs\DEP.tx; if _n_ = 1 then /*insert titles*/ put 'title1,title2,title3,title4';   outvar = catt(     hdr_type,',',     id,',',     ' ,',     amt ) ; put outvar; run; ... View more