Turning text files into SAS data sets6 common problems and their solutions. If youre reading this blog post, you have probably gotten a text file from someone that needs to be turned into a SAS data set so that it can be manipulated, analyzed and made into a report. It all starts with getting the data into SAS. TextPipe-Web-for-to-mp4.gif' alt='Sample Pipe Delimited Text File' title='Sample Pipe Delimited Text File' />Sometimes that requires a call or email to Technical Support because the data just wont play nicely with PROC IMPORT or because you need to use INFILEINPUT to make things just the way you want them. As a SAS Technical Support analyst, here are some of the common questions and issues that I see and solutions for them I downloaded a CSV file from the web and SAS thinks that its all one line. Different operating systems create text files with different end of record markers. UNIX uses a single line feed Windows uses the combination of carriage return and line feed and the MAC uses just a carriage return yes, SAS runs on the MAC if there is a guest Windows OS. SAS has added the TERMSTR host option to the INFILE statement to handle these translations. For example, if youre reading a UNIX file on Windows, add TERMSTRLF to your FILENAME or INFILE statement, and SAS will handle it correctly. INFILE C MYPATHMYDATA. CSV TERMSTRLF. SAS doesnt understand that side by side delimiters mean a missing value. Although it has been around for a long time, many SAS programmers have not yet discovered the DSD option. DSD stands for delimiter sensitive data. With you specify this option, SAS will ignore delimiters inside of quoted strings, treat side by side delimiters as a missing value and set the delimiter to a comma. If your delimiter is a comma, youre good. If it is something else, you will also need the DLM option to tell SAS what your delimiter is. FILENAME MYFILE C TODAY2. CSV DSD. I dont know how to tell SAS that I have a TAB delimited file. Specifying a tab delimiter has to be done differently from, say a pipe or an asterisk. There is no way to type a tab, so you have to specify it a different way, by its hexadecimal value. If you are running SAS on Windows, UNIX or MAC, do it like this  DLM0. If youre using MVSZOS, do this DLM0. Parameters. to. Receiver, or receivers of the mail. The formatting of this string must comply with RFC 2822. Some examples are userexample. You could do a transformation on the data on the way in. It is specified in the control file. See this recent post for an example SQLLDR CTL Load date field. Use Microsoft Excel to import data from a text file into a worksheet. The Text Import Wizard helps you import data from delimited text and organize it neatly. Note This article applies to Fuji. For more current information, see Data Sources at http The ServiceNow Wiki is no longer being. Sample Pipe Delimited Text File' title='Sample Pipe Delimited Text File' />Ls or objects Lists R objects created during session, they are stored in file. RData when exiting R and the workspace is saved. This is a list of file formats used by computers, organized by type. Filename extensions are usually noted in parentheses if they differ from the file format name or. Creating Your Own Decks There are 2 basic ways to create your own flashcards 1 in a text editor or a spreadsheet. INFILE umemonthlydata2. DSD DLM0. 9X. There are dots between every character and none of the numerics read in. You have what is generically called a UNICODE file, and SAS doesnt recognize it as such. In what we think of as ordinary files, each character takes up one byte. In UNICODE files, there are two bytes for each character. This convention is to accommodate every written language whether it is English, German, Russian, Farsi, Korean, anything. Because English does not require two bytes, the character is in the first byte and a null in the second. Normally, but not always, there two bytes at the beginning of the file indicating that it is UNICODE. If that code is missing, SAS will treat all those null characters as data and make a mess of your data set. There are two ways to handle this situation The first is add the ENCODINGUNICODE option to your FILENAME or INFILE statement. INFILE C USERSCHARLEYDOWNLOADSRESEARCH. CSV ENCODINGUNICODE DSD DLM. The second is to fix the input record as it is read by removing the null characters. The second line of code in the example below is called a null input. It pulls a record from the file into the input buffer. The COMPRESS removes the null characters and you can read it as usual. INFILE C USERSCHARLEYDOWNLOADSRESEARCH. Rwjf Roadmaps To Health Community Grants Program Programs. CSV DSD DLM. INFILECOMPRESSINFILE,0. X. INPUT lt your normal INPUT statement. My program stops reading the file before all the data is read in. This situation is unique to the Windows operating system. The Windows operating system inserts three special characters to signal the end of the file. The character is called an end of file EOF marker, and its hexadecimal value is 1. Ax. Sometimes a single EOF marker can appear in the data. The solution to this problem is to add the IGNOREDOSEOF option to your FILENAME or INFILE statement. SAS will then discard the end of file marker and continue reading. No other operating system has this issue because they store data differently than Windows. INFILE C USERSCHARLEYDOWNLOADSRESEARCH. CSV DSD DLM IGNOREDOSEOF. When you have an issue reading a text file, always read the SAS log closely. The next two optionsLRECL and TRUNCOVERare simply a good idea to include in your SAS program to prevent issues that are hard to describe or diagnose without looking very closely at the messages in the SAS log. LRECL option stands for logical record length. I still remember the first time a SAS user told me that the records in his CSV file were more than 2. I was shocked. Yeah, Ive been doing this for a spell. There is no longer an upper limit on LRECL. I worked with someone with reading a file with records just under 2 mb in length. Begin by setting LRECL3. If your LRECL is too short, it will chop off your data and put a message in the log that reads. NOTE One or more lines were truncated. If there isnt enough data in a record for all of the variables in your INPUT statement, by default, the INPUT statement reads data into as many variables as it can, then goes to the next record for more data for the rest of the variables. When this happens, you will have fewer observations written than records read, and this note is added to your SAS log. NOTE SAS went to a new line when INPUT statement reached past the end of a line. Unless you have a file where it requires multiple records to make a single observation, this is a bad thing. Specifying the TRUNCOVER option prevents it. When you have an issue reading a text file, read the SAS log carefully. When I ask people to read me the messages in their log, most say There arent any errors or warnings. A few say There arent any. When I can persuade them to read ALL of the blue messages to me, most of the items above can be solved in less than a a minutemaking everyone happy. Finally, dont spend hours struggling to read a simple file. Give us a call or send us an email. Were here to help you. If you send an email include your site number, a brief description of the problem, your SAS log that contains everything from the DATA statement to the last note, and a sample of the data that resists your attempt to read it.