Date:         Tue, 21 Sep 1999 09:08:07 -0400
Reply-To:     Jack Shoemaker <JShoemaker@ACCORDANT.NET>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Jack Shoemaker <JShoemaker@ACCORDANT.NET>
Subject:      Reading semi-packed ASCII data
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Dear SAS-L,

   I have data from an external source with a COBOL-ish picture description
of S9(09)V99.  It has been converted to ASCII in such a way that the sign
and low-order information is rendered in a single character.  For example, a
'B' indicates that the sign is positive and that the low-order value is 2.
In other words,

4121139739B

Corresponds to 412,113,973.92.

There are twenty possible values for this trailing character - 10 for
positive values and 10 for negative values.  I know what they all are and
have loaded them into two formats called $sign and $value.  Now I have this
piece of code:

input
  @1 _T      10.1
 @11 _Nibble $1.;
 T = ( _T + ( put( _Nibble, $value. ) / 100 ) ) * put( _Nibble, $sign. );

to read the contents of the field into a numeric variable called T.  Seems
pretty ugly to me.  Is there a better way to skin this cat?  I am running
SAS V7(P1) on WNT.

TIA - Jack

--
Jack N Shoemaker / JShoemaker@Accordant.net