Date:         Wed, 19 Jan 2011 11:41:46 -0500
Reply-To:     Arthur Tabachneck <art297@ROGERS.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Arthur Tabachneck <art297@ROGERS.COM>
Subject:      Re: Reading variable length records
Comments: To: Quentin McMullen <qmcmullen.sas@GMAIL.COM>

Quentin,

This code is just as inefficient as Joe's code (maybe even more so as I
simply copied his code and just added proc format commands).  But, since you
indicated that the problem was in reading flat files, I extended his code to
read the flat file, then write and run an include file that creates the
formats.

filename fmt_in "c:\formats.txt";
filename fmt_out "c:\formats.inc";
data _null_;
  file fmt_out;
  infile fmt_in end=last;
  if _n_ eq 1 then do;
    put "proc format;";
  end;
  input;
  put "value ";
  varname=scan(_infile_,3);
  put varname;
  put " ";
  do __t = 4 by 2 until (missing(start));
    start=scanq(_infile_,__t,' .');
    if start ne "." then do;
      put start;
      put " = ";
      label=scanq(_infile_,__t+1,' .');
      put label;
      if not missing(start) then output;
    end;
  end;
  put ";";
  if last then put "run;";
run;
%include "c:\formats.inc";

data have;
  format gender gender.;
  format race race.;
  format favcolor favcolor.;
  input gender race favcolor;
  cards;
1 1 1
2 2 2
1 3 3
2 3 4
2 3 5
2 3 6
2 3 7
2 3 8
;
run;

HTH,
Art

kwread kwinput kwflat kwinclude kwformat
-------
On Wed, 19 Jan 2011 09:44:50 -0500, Quentin McMullen
<qmcmullen.sas@GMAIL.COM> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>This is probably a straight forward questoin for those that are good
>at reading in data from flat files, but I'm far from my area of
>strength...
>
>I have a bunch of SPSS code that is stored in Excel.  A single column
>has the specification for an SPSS statement used to create value
>labels, e.g.:
>
>HAVE:
>
>variable labels Gender 1 "Male" 2 "Female".
>variable labels Race 1 "Black" 2 "White" 3 "Asian".
>variable labels FavColor 1 "Red" 2 "White" 3 "Blue" 4 "Orange" 5
>"Yellow" 6 "Green".
>
>
>I would like to read in that specification, and generate a dataset
>with 3 variables: varname, value, valuelabel, with one record per
>varname-value, so that I can build SAS formats.
>
>WANT:
>
>Gender 1 Male
>Gender 2 Female
>Race   1 Black
>Race   2 White
>Race   3 Asian
>FavColor        1 Red
>FavColor        2 White
>FavColor        3 Blue
>FavColor        4 Orange
>FavColor        5 Yellow
>FavColor        6 Greeen
>
>My basic problem is not knowing how many value labels are in the list.
> I suppose I could read it in as one long variable, then parse it
>myself looping through the list of value-label pairs until I hit the
>end.  But was wondering how someone who knew about reading in flat
>files would approach this.
>
>Kind Regards,
>--Quentin