Hi fellow SAS geeks,

I've got some tables that need to be converted to CSV and sent to our IT department on a daily basis. Two of the fields appear numeric, but contain leading zeroes and/or spaces and thus need to be treated as character variables. With a regular PROC EXPORT, these fields are treated as numeric, which is not correct. IT wants these character variables surrounded in quotes, ie "09842." As per a few old SAS-L posts, I've tried applying the $quote. format to the outgoing table, but that doesn't seem to work-- the raw CSV contains three sets of quotes around the character variables, when I only need one. I feel like I'm missing something simple. Any ideas??

Thanks in advance!

SAMPLE DATA:

data test; input item1 $ div1 item2 $ div2; cards; 00542 22 01685 15 00542 22 16895 42 00542 22 78420 20 ; run;

proc export data=test outfile='\\stuff\things.csv' dbms=csv replace; run;

The resulting CSV file: 542,22,1685,15 542,22,16895,42 542,22,78420,20

What IT wants to see: "00542",22,"01685",15 "00542",22,"16895",42 "00542,"22,"78420",20

I've tried applying the quote format in the step immediately before the format, like this: proc sql; create table coolthings as select t1.item1 format $quote., t2.div1 from lib1.stuff t1, lib2.morestuff t2 where t1.item1 = t2.item1 order by t1.item1; quit;

While I see the strings surrounded by (single) quotes when I open the CSV file in Excel, opening the file in Notepad gives me: """00542""",22,"""01685""",15 """00542""",22,"""16895""",42 """00542""",22,"""78420""",20

.*^*.*^*.*^*.*^*.*^*. Julia Ramsey Crosstown Traders, Inc. (520) 745-4500, x4149 Julia.Ramsey@cxtown.com