Date:         Mon, 19 Jun 2006 08:51:08 -0600
Reply-To:     Alan Churchill <SASL001@SAVIAN.NET>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Alan Churchill <SASL001@SAVIAN.NET>
Subject:      Re: How to read a text file with comma as the demiliter?
Comments: To: Xu Libin <Libin.Xu@IRS.GOV>
In-Reply-To:  <FA0F518F85A0CF40891CB7D09DA02DF608D14E@NCT0010CP3MB04.ds.irsnet.gov>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Use tab delimiters when exporting: it will save you a lot of headaches.

Alan

Alan Churchill
Savian "Bridging SAS and Microsoft Technologies"
www.savian.net


-----Original Message-----
From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Xu
Libin
Sent: Monday, June 19, 2006 8:28 AM
To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: How to read a text file with comma as the demiliter?

Thanks for the advice. The colon modifier is what I need to read the data
correctly. That saves me a lot of work to read the fixed-width file.
Actually the original file is of MS Access. To export the Access file to a
fixed-width file is much more cumbersome than to a delimited file.

Libin

-----Original Message-----
From: T J [mailto:tjpush@YAHOO.COM]
Sent: Monday, June 19, 2006 9:51 AM
To: Xu Libin
Subject: Re: How to read a text file with comma as the demiliter?

Changing
  input x $4. y $8.  z ;
to
  input x :$4.  Y :$8  z ;

usually helps.

The ":" modifier tells SAS to read UP to 4 or 8 characters until it sees a
comma, the delimeter.

TJ



On Mon, 19 Jun 2006 09:40:54 -0400, Xu Libin <Libin.Xu@IRS.GOV> wrote:

>Thanks for the suggestion. I tried both dsd and delimiter=','. The
>results were the same.
>
>Libin
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Eric Hoogenboom [mailto:erichoogenboom@YAHOO.COM]
>Sent: Monday, June 19, 2006 9:31 AM
>To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU; Xu Libin
>Subject: Re: How to read a text file with comma as the demiliter?
>
>Specify the delimiter dlm=',' in the infile statement.
>
>Hth,
>Eric