Hi debbie!

Try the line hold specifier @ in the input statement:

data results;

length b $1;

infile 'c:\tmp\tabdel.csv' firstobs=2 delimiter='09'x; input id type @; if type=1 then input a b; else input b; run;

data (tab-delimited): c:\tmp\tabdel.csv

nummer type a b 1 1 1 a 2 1 2 b 3 2 c 4 1 4 d 5 2 e

Kind Regards

Jochen

debbie.cooper@STEVENSONCOMPANY.COM (Debbie Cooper) wrote in message news:<IIEJLJCPGNLOFKLAJENPIEIACJAA.debbie.cooper@stevensoncompany.com>... > We will be receiving survey results in the form of tab delimited files soon. > There will be about 180 files representing different products that we > research. The problem I'm having is that the files are being sent to me in > tab-delimited format with the field names in the first row of the file. The > data is such that if no respondent answers a particular question, that > field/column will not show up. So there won't be an empty space > representing no answer, the field simply won't be there. > > Because of this I've tried to use Proc Import to read the files but what's > happening is SAS reads each file and can potentially assign different > formats to the same fields in different files. Not only that but we have a > few text fields (open-end questions) as well and SAS is apparantly looking > at the first record and deciding what length to give these fields, so > subsequent records can have the fields truncated. > > SAS tells me I need to use an INFILE statement to read these files and that > makes sense except for the fact that I'll never know which fields will or > won't show up in the files. > > Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. > > Thanks, > Debbie