Date:         Mon, 24 Nov 2003 10:01:36 -0500
Reply-To:     Peter Crawford <Peter@CRAWFORDSOFTWARE.DEMON.CO.UK>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Peter Crawford <Peter@CRAWFORDSOFTWARE.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject:      Re: Firstobs option ignored with multiple file read
Comments: To: mcmillan@IARC.FR
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 05:18:41 -0800, G.McMillan <mcmillan@IARC.FR> wrote:

>Greetings!
>I am using a wildcard in the infile statement to read a number of text
>files. The first line of each text file lists the column names, and I
>want to skip over these.  In principal, the ‘firstobs=' option in the
>infile statement would accomplish this. However, SAS v8.2 only
>respects the ‘firstobs=' option for the first file read, and ignores
>it for each subsequent file. The result is that SAS reads the first
>line of each text file after the first, resulting in invalid data
>errors for each of the numeric variables (since it is trying to read
>column names as numbers!).
>
>I appreciate any thoughts on this problem.
>
>Thanks very much in advance!
>GM
>
>
>The code is shown below (note the ‘*' wildcard in the file
>specification):
>
>Data WORK.X;
>      infile "E:\Users\Lymphoma - *.txt"
>delimiter='09'x MISSOVER DSD lrecl=32767 firstobs = 2;
>
>informat No_hospital $2. ;
>informat No_Patient best32. ;
>
>format No_hospital $2. ;
>format No_Patient best12. ;
>
>input
>         No_hopital $
>         No_Patient
>;
>output;
>run;

The infile statement has option filename= that provides the
name of the file in the current buffer. When that changes, skip.
Like:
>Data WORK.X;
    length filenam $200; /*ensure enough space for path/filename */
>   infile "E:\Users\Lymphoma - *.txt"
>      delimiter='09'x  MISSOVER  DSD lrecl=32767
     /*firstobs = 2   suppressed, because it's dealt with by code*/
       filename = filenam  /* collect current path/file name */   ;
    input  @;  /* load buffer */
    if filenam ne lag(filenam) then input; ** skipping header;
>
>informat No_hospital $2. ;
>informat No_Patient best32. ;
>
>format No_hospital $2. ;
>format No_Patient best12. ;
>
>input
>         No_hopital $
>         No_Patient
>;
>output;
>run;

Good Luck
Peter Crawford