**StudySAS Blog: Mastering Clinical Data Management with SAS**

GETTING DATA INTO SAS direct link: http://www.biostat.ucla.edu/course/m403b/M403B2005_2DataInput.pdf 1. Importing data from other sources • Use DBMS Copy, STAT Transfer, or some other software that performs similar functions. • Use SAS/ACCESS or the SAS Import feature in Windows. • Use PROC IMPORTS to read certain types of data files. • Create a raw data (ASCII) file then use INPUT and INFILE statements to read the raw data file in SAS programs. 2. Creating SAS data sets with raw (ASCII) data files • Data are placed within the SAS program directly after the DATALINES or CARDS statement. Use INPUT statement to read the data. *** Read data within SAS program as SAS data file ***; DATA survey; INPUT Q1Major Q2Degree Q3SASpast Q4ProjData Q5SASexprn Q6SASfutur; DATALINES; 2 1 1 1 2 8 2 2 0 0 0 7 2 1 0 0 1 4 2 1 0 1 0 8 more raw data lines ; RUN ; • In the above example, – Spaces (or other types of delimiters) are required between data values – Missing values must be specified (blank sp...

Very Basic: What SAS statements would you code to read an external raw data file into a DATA step? You would use the INFILE statement to specify the location of the external raw data file, and the INPUT statement to read in the data into the variables in a SAS dataset. How do you read in the variables that you need? You use the INPUT statement with specific column pointers, such as @5 or 12-17 , to define where each variable is located in the raw data file. Are you familiar with special input delimiters? How are they used? Yes, special input delimiters like DLM and DSD are used to specify how fields are separated in the data. They are included in the INFILE statement. For example, the DLM option can be used to specify a comma as a delimiter for CSV files. The DSD option is used for comma-separated values (CSV) files and treats consecutive delimiters as missing values and ignores delimiters enclosed in quotation marks. If reading a variable-length file with fixed inp...

Options in SAS' INFILE Statement There are a number of options available for the INFILE statement. Below you will find discussion of the following options: DLM='character', DSD, MISSOVER, and FIRSTOBS=value. DLM='character' When I prepare a data file for list input to SAS, I use a blank space as the delimiter. The delimiter is the character which must appear between the score for one variable and that for the next variable. One can, however, choose to use a delimiter other than a blank space. For example, the comma is a commonly used delimiter. If you are going to use a delimiter other than a blank space, you must tell SAS what the delimiter is. Here is an example of a couple of data lines in a comma delimited file: 4,2,8010,2,4,2,4,4,2,2,2,2,2,2,4,4,2,4,2,2,CDFR,22,900,5,4,1 4,2,8011,1,2,3,1,3,4,4,4,1,2,2,4,2,3,4,3,1,psychology,24,360,4,3,1 Here is the INFILE statement which identified the delimiter as being a comma: infile 'd:\Research-Misc\Hale\Hale.csv' ...