SAS-Lers:

Yesterday I asked for a solution to rid myself of white space in flat files. I had been using the statement

put (var1-var6) (5. '~');

where some of the numeric variables were considerably shorter than length 5. I received a very simple solution from Tony Payne (thanks Tony!) who suggested using

put var1 (var2-var6) (+(-1) '~');

Until today, I had always disciplined myself to supply a format for every variable within a PUT statement. What a pleasant surprise to find out how unnecessary that is.

I also want to thank Bruce Kayton, Wolf Lesener, Chris Roper, Wei Yen, and Heather Russell for responding. It's possible that there have been more replies, but I receive SAS-L in digest form.

Louise Weiler Pacific Gas and Electric Company law4@pge.com