Hello, I have a folowing problem:

I need to read a records from external file and I use this syntax:

data _test_; infile 'path' dlm='!'; input text:78; run;

The external file has this structure: each rows is ended by sign ! maximal length of each row is 78 characters

But my problem is: If I use the programm as above, and I have a space on the first position in some row, the resulting observation is without this space...

For example i have this part of external file:

1987154 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 5 7 17 21 46 10385 12! 6 165 184 ! 1988154 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 3 7 12 16 33 67 82117 98! 198 211 !

First three rows are read succesfully, but the fourth row is read as " 198 211 "

Thanks a lot for a quick help.

Hi, Josef