Date:         Tue, 13 Jul 2004 02:27:50 -0400
Reply-To:     Peter Crawford <peter.crawford@BLUEYONDER.CO.UK>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Peter Crawford <peter.crawford@BLUEYONDER.CO.UK>
Subject:      Re: HELP: A weird Data step issue
Comments: To: Vijay Mehrotra <vjm@SFSU.EDU>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 19:07:20 -0700, Vijay Mehrotra <vjm@SFSU.EDU> wrote:

>Well, after 10 years away from SAS, I’m back in the mosh pit with the
>monster, analyzing several data sets each with several million records.
>
>
>
>
>However, before I can even get started, I’ve run into a weird problem in
>my first Data step:
>
>
>
>My raw data is in CSV files, with each record having the following
>layout:
>
>
>
>T:         A text field
>
>C:         A composite of two fields (date and time), separated by a
>space (‘ ‘)
>
>N1:       A numeric field
>
>N2:       Another numeric field
>
>
>
>The problem:  SAS refuses to read in C – it only reads the date part,
>and even that requires some coaxing.
>
>
>
>Has anyone out there seen anything like this in the past?  If so, I
>would be very, very grateful for any suggestions about how to solve this
>problem smartly.  Thanks in advance for your help on this – I’ve got ½
>day into it so far, and I’m somewhat baffled…
>
>
>
>Regards,
>
>
>
>Vijay Mehrotra
>
>Department of Decision Sciences
>
>San Francisco State University
>
>vjm@sfsu.edu
>
>

Hi Vijay
if your code and (some)data are tooo private to post, here are
a few things to try
   1  use DSD option on the infile statement
   2  use an informat statement - don't put these on the input statement
   3  in SAS9, for that time stamp, use informat anydtdtm30.
      &  SAS v8,  use informat $30. and rebuild after input

good luck
Peter Crawford