$CBw. Informat

Reads standard character data from column-binary files.
Category: Column Binary

Syntax

$CBw.

Syntax Description

w
specifies the width of the input field.
Default:none
Range:1–32767

Details

Column-binary data storage compresses data so that more than 80 items of data can be stored on a single “virtual” punch card.
The $CBw. informat reads standard character data from column-binary files, with each card column represented in two bytes. The $CBw. informat translates the data into standard character codes. If the combinations are invalid punch codes, SAS returns blanks and sets the automatic variable _ERROR_ to 1.

Example

input @1 name $cb2.;
Data Line 1
Result
----+----1
EBCDIC
ASCII
200A
+
N
1The data line is a hexadecimal representation of the column binary. The “virtual” punch card column for the example data has row 12, row 6, and row 8 punched. The binary representation is 0010 0000 0000 1010.

See Also

How to Read Column-Binary Data in SAS Language Reference: Concepts