$CHARw. Informat

Reads character data with blanks.

Category:

Character

Syntax

$CHARw.

Syntax Description

w

specifies the width of the input field.

Default	8 if the length of the variable is undefined. Otherwise, the default is the length of the variable
Range	1–32767

Details

The $CHARw. informat does not trim leading and trailing blanks or convert a single period in the input data field to a blank before storing values. If you use $CHARw. in an INFORMAT or ATTRIB statement within a DATA step to read list input, then by default SAS interprets any blank embedded within data as a field delimiter, including leading blanks.

Comparisons

The $CHARw. informat is almost identical to the $w. informat. However, $CHARw. does not trim leading blanks or convert a single period in the input data field to a blank, while the $w. informat does.

Use the table below to compare the SAS informat $CHAR8. with notation in other programming languages:

Language	Character Notation
SAS	$CHAR8.
IBM 370 assembler	CL8
C	char [8]
COBOL	PIC x(8)
Fortran	A8
PL/I	CHAR(8)

Example

input @1 name $char5.;

Data Line	Result 1
----+----1
XYZ	XYZ##
XYZ	#XYZ#
.	##.##
X YZ	#X#YZ
1The character # represents a blank space.