Date:         Fri, 26 Jan 2007 07:56:25 -0500
Reply-To:     Ed Heaton <EdHeaton@WESTAT.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Ed Heaton <EdHeaton@WESTAT.COM>
Subject:      Re: input of variable length variables
Comments: To: Arthur Tabachneck <art297@NETSCAPE.NET>, allhunt@SIUE.EDU
In-Reply-To:  <200701260204.l0PN0ROm016559@mailgw.cc.uga.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Allen and Arthur,

Why don't you just do this reordering in the original DATA step?

data have;
  format firstname $30. lastname $30. email $30. nickname $30. ;
  infile cards scanover;
  input lastname $ firstname $ nickname $ email $;
  cards;
Washington  George      gwashi  gwashi@some.place
Hill  Thomas  thill     thill@some.place
Vaughn  Vera  vaughn  vvaughn@some.place
;
/* run; The DATA step ends with the semicolon above.  There's nothing
   to run here! */


Ed

Edward Heaton, Senior Systems Analyst,
Westat (An Employee-Owned Research Corporation),
1600 Research Boulevard, RW-4541, Rockville, MD 20850-3195
Voice: (301) 610-4818                  Fax: (301) 294-3879
mailto:EdHeaton@Westat.com             http://www.Westat.com



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-sas-l@listserv.uga.edu [mailto:owner-sas-l@listserv.uga.edu]
On Behalf Of Arthur Tabachneck
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 9:04 PM
To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU; allhunt@SIUE.EDU
Subject: Re: input of variable length variables


I just realized that I didn't answer both parts of your question.  Once
you have the data, simply use a retain statement indicating the desired
order.  For example:

data have;
  format lastname $30. firstname $30. nickname $30. email $30.;
  infile cards scanover;
  input lastname $ firstname $ nickname $ email $;
  cards;
Washington  George      gwashi  gwashi@some.place
Hill  Thomas  thill     thill@some.place
Vaughn  Vera  vaughn  vvaughn@some.place
;
run;

data want;
  retain firstname lastname email nickname;
  set have;
run;

HTH,
Art
--------
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 14:00:53 -0800, Allen <allhunt@SIUE.EDU> wrote:

>I forgot to say, but I am trying to input this data like cards.  Again
>Thanks!  -Allen
>
>On Jan 25, 3:57 pm, "Allen" <allh...@siue.edu> wrote:
>> I have to cut and past data fields out of another program and I need
to
>> reorder the variables and generally be able to manipulate the data as
>> ususal in a dataset.  After manipulation, I'll want to export the
data.
>>  The dataset has 4 variables each of varying length.  I have an
example
>> below.  Thanks for your help!  -Allen
>>
>> Washington  George      gwashi  gwa...@some.place
>> Hill  Thomas  thill     t...@some.place
>> Vaughn  Vera  vaughn  vvau...@some.place