Date:         Tue, 30 Aug 2005 05:14:52 -0400
Reply-To:     Gerhard Hellriegel <ghellrieg@T-ONLINE.DE>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Gerhard Hellriegel <ghellrieg@T-ONLINE.DE>
Subject:      Re: line length limit on datalines statement?

There is a limit, I think. However it is NOT 256! Use the option LRECL= to
get a longer record. You can also read "streams" which have almost no
limitations.
That's true for reading external file, NOT for DATALINES which contain
instream data. There you might have the limitations of the SAS editor which
might be around 256.
So simply store your data in a external file and read that one. Add e.g.
LRECL=5000 to the INFILE statement and your records ca become quite long!




On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 18:40:31 +1000, Scott Bass
<usenet739_yahoo_com_au@ALFREDO.CC.UGA.EDU> wrote:

>SAS 8.2, Windows
>
>Hi,
>
>I've got a datastep like so:
>
>data metadata._testmvars;
>   infile datalines dlm="|" missover;
>   length testid $8 name $10 value $300;
>   input  testid name value;
>   if testid in("","========") then delete;
>   datalines4;
>
>then a line that's 262 characters long, with the "value" variable defined
>from columns 24 - 262.
>
>The line is getting truncated at 200 characters (an ominous sign).  The
>variable itself is 300 characters.
>
>Another weirdness is when I run the program in batch, I get this warning in
>the log:
>
>WARNING: Truncated record.
>
>but not if I run the exact same program under DMS.  I do use the -batch
>option on the batch invocation, so the linesize may be different between the
>two executions.
>
>Anyway, is there a line length limit to a datalines statement?
>
>Thanks,
>Scott