What DATA_NULL_ is trying to point out is that for an INFORMAT the decimal part of the informat is the number of decimal places to apply when the value read does NOT contain a decimal point.  When you specify dollar9.2 you are telling SAS to divide the 20,000 value by 100 in order to implement the implied decimal place. Use dollar9.0 for the informat. ... View more

Hi Art, excellente solution. Didn't know about the call routine sortn. Very nice code and simple to understand. Thanks for that ... View more

This article in the SAS Documention will help http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/basess/58133/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a001336069.htm . Basically, the problem starts because you've not specified character lengths.  SAS then picks the length based on the first value is sees for each variable you've used.  "First" is set to 15, "City" copies this and is 15 too, while "CC" is set to 23 (i.e. 15 plus the length of ",England" (8) = 23). To work for your example you should either set the character lengths, or explore using the "TRIM" function when appending character variables.  (Actually you'll probably end up using both.) Hope that helps! ... View more