Date:         Mon, 16 Jun 1997 21:40:39 +0100
Reply-To:     Peter Crawford <Peter@CRAWFORDSOFTWARE.DEMON.CO.UK>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
From:         Peter Crawford <Peter@CRAWFORDSOFTWARE.DEMON.CO.UK>
Organization: Crawford Software Consultancy Limited
Subject:      Re: Input Routine Problem

In article <01bc7860$7d2c9ac0$b005db81@127.0.0.1.inre.asu.edu>, RHess
<atrth@asuvm.inre.asu.edu> writes
>I am almost embarrassed but the need to solve a problem overcomes it.
>
>I have a data set derived from the output of a test analysis program that
>produces a series of scores.  The data is actually 48 distinct sets of
>school information (1 per school).  The first five lines are garbage ASCII
>report comments but beginning in the sixth line is the data (four columns
>worth).  This data runs for 65 lines and then is repeated for the next
>school, i.e., 5 lines of comments followed by 65 lines of 4 columns of real
>data.  And so on until the 48 schools are reported in the file.
>
>I need to read this data into a SAS data set to merge it with later
>information.  I know I need to run a set of loops but can't seem to find a
>way to remove the five lines of garbage that precede each set of data in
>the file.  Any suggestions?
>
>Thanks in advance,
>Bob Hess
>atrth@asuvm.inre.asu.edu
Why not use
 input ///// @;
at the appropriate time.
 
How would you know that it is the *right time* ?
 
Can you use the scanning input           input @'text'
 where 'text' is a prefix to the meaningful data ?
 
It would be easier to propose a better solution than fixed structure
read, if you provide a clip of the data.
--
Peter Crawford