Date:         Tue, 2 Dec 2003 10:17:21 -0500
Reply-To:     "Fehd, Ronald J. (PHPPO)" <rjf2@CDC.GOV>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "Fehd, Ronald J. (PHPPO)" <rjf2@CDC.GOV>
Subject:      Re: fixed and variable formats
Comments: cc: Kevin Roland Viel <kviel@EMORY.EDU>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

> From: Kevin Roland Viel [mailto:kviel@EMORY.EDU]
> Doh!

Just another of the hazards of being tall and having big feat:
open mouth, insert foot: %-Q
ah, yes, the taste of shoe-leather!
         the sound of one hand clapping, ... one's forehead

>    Perhaps I could sow more confusion :)
>
>    Specifically I was refering to external records and the
> INFILE statement option RECFM=F or RECFM=V.  I suspect that
> it refers to whether the length of a record is a constant or
> not, F or V respectively.  Can someone confirm or correct this?

now that we're in the same chapter in the documentation
and you have your trusty 'SAS documentation for your host system'
available

OpSys=Win is notorious for having variable-length records/rows,
something that never happens to BigIron users

You'll do well, to read your data once,
examine the log, see the maximum -- and minimum -- length of the file
and use
lrecl = <max width> pad

alternately, your text file may have high school essay question text
-- interminable commentary --
then you'll need:
infile FileSpec length = LineLen;
input FirstVar 1-10 @;
VarLen = LineLen - 10;
input @1 SomeVar $varying200. VarLen;

the above carefully typed from the SAS Ln Ref v6, 1e manual

Ron Fehd  the in* maven  CDC Atlanta GA USA RJF2@cdc.gov

My computer must be broken:
whenever I ask a wrong question,
         I get a wrong answer.
-- Pot-Shots by Ashleigh Brilliant

My computer must be broken:
whenever I feed it varying length records,
         I get a short, long, or wrong answer.
-- RJF2