I want to thank HTH.; Laurence Adair; Nancy Brucken; msz03@health.state.ny.us; Michael Thomas for helping me on how to read the first two characters of multiple files. For sure you saved me time. I used the following procedure from msz03@health.state.ny.us:

Data Master; infile datalines;

*** add a LENGTH for variable state (otherwise its length will be 150); length fil2read $150 state $2; input fil2read $; *** extract the value of state from the file name; state = substr(fil2read,4,2); infile dummy filevar=fil2read end=done missover DLM = ','; do while (not done); input A B C; output; end; datalines; G:\AK123.txt G:\AL2333.txt G:\AR2333.txt G:\AZ2344.txt .. ; run;

Shiferaw_G <Shiferaw_G@BLS.GOV> on 06/20/2000 04:18:21 PM Please respond to Shiferaw_G <Shiferaw_G@BLS.GOV> To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU cc: (bcc: Michael S. Zdeb/BWH/DFLH/CCH/OPH/DOH) Subject: The First Two Character of a file names to be a value in the file content

I Folks; I have multiple text files to be read and contained into one file. I am able to to that Using the following Procedure: Data Master; infile datalines; length fil2read $150; input fil2read $; infile dummy filevar=fil2read end=done missover DLM = ','; do while (not done); input A B C; output; end; datalines; G:\AK123.txt G:\AL2333.txt G:\AR2333.txt G:\AZ2344.txt .. ; run; This works perfectly. I need to identify which record comes from which file (states) in the Master file. That means if the record comes from AK123.txt the new var name called "State" should have a value 'AK'. How whold I do that. Note - There is no a vairable called "State" in each file. Thank you in Advance. Gabe