You might want to take a peek at line and column pointers that can be used with the INPUT statement.

This illustrates one such approach:

data _null_; policy = 493; file 'dum.dat' lrecl=132 pad; put #2 @8 policy 3. @20 'Blind Boy Fuller' #5 @45 '1415 Aardvark Ln, Scrunch City, OK 99999' #24; run;

data disstuff; infile 'dum.dat' lrecl=132; input #2 @8 policy 3. @20 name :&$20. #5 @45 address :&$50. #24; put _all_; run;

That such should be hep'ful ...

Prost, Puddin'

***************************************************************** *** Puddin' Man PuddingDotMan at GmailDotCom ** *****************************************************************;

On 10/27/05, Kimberly Anne <kimmerz321@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi all, > > I have a somewhat complicated text file that I want to parse. > > For each observation, there are 24 lines of text that contain the > information I need, each with a carriage return at the end. On some > lines, I want to get several pieces of information. On others, I only > need one piece. On others, I don't want any of the information - I > just want to skip over them. > > I know where the data I want to get at in each line is (i.e. a policy > number is in position 8 in line 2 and is 3 digits long, a name is in > position 20 on line 2 and is 20 characters long, an address is in > position 45 on line 5 and is 50 characters long), but I'm not sure how > to parse this. I was trying to use an array to grab each line, > thinking i could just parse each element, but SAS is giving me errors > when I try to use INPUT with an array. > > If anybody has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Thanks! > > Kim >