Date:         Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:28:58 -0400
Reply-To:     Nat Wooding <nathani@VERIZON.NET>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Nat Wooding <nathani@VERIZON.NET>
Subject:      Re: Question about Commaw.d informat
In-Reply-To:  <AANLkTimmkVg8SXAsD-gBuQYb0eaXkwwuUvg+74GMKiXg@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

Yu

When I run this code, I receive the log


NOTE: Invalid argument to function INPUT at line 145 column 3.
a=.
a=. _ERROR_=1 _N_=1
NOTE: Mathematical operations could not be performed at the following
places. The results of the
      operations have been set to missing values.




Which is what I would expect since you are associating a character string,
"S" with a numeric informat.

Are you certain that your log did not display the results that mine gave?

Nat Wooding
-----Original Message-----
From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Yu
Zhang
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 11:12 PM
To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Question about Commaw.d informat

Hello,

while i am reading the some old post, i came across a strange output from
the INPUT function.

data _null_;
a=input('S',comma.);
put a=;
run;

the program runs OK without any complaining. however if you change the input
value to some thing other than 'S'/'s', the log shows 'invalid argument of
input function' message.

so this leads to me to believe that 'S' must have a special meaning. but
what is it?

can someone please let me know?

Thanks!

Yu