Question

I can create a Numbered Range List of numeric type, but not character type.

My code is similar to this:

DATA TestDataset;
    INPUT a1-a3 $;
    DATALINES;
    A   B   C
    ;
RUN;

This produces 3 variables – [a1], [a2] and [a3] as expected. However [a3] is character, but [a1] and [a2] are numeric. This leaves me with missing values as per the following table:

a1  a2  a3
.   .   C

The following code works, but obviously it does not scale nicely.

INPUT a1 $ a2 $ a3 $;

Am I missing something?

Answer 1

I believe you can use the hyphen notation on the length statement to get what you want. You really should use a length statement regardless..otherwise it defaults to $8.

DATA TestDataset;
 length a1-a3 $20;
 INPUT a1-a3 ;
 DATALINES;
 A   B   C
 ;
RUN;