$w. Informat

Reads standard character data.

Category: Character
Alias: $Fw.
Syntax
Syntax Description
Details
Comparisons
Example

Syntax

$w.

Syntax Description

w

specifies the width of the input field. You must specify w because SAS does not supply a default value.

Range 1–32767

Details

The $w. informat trims leading blanks and left aligns the values before storing the text. In addition, if a field contains only blanks and a single period, $w. converts the period to a blank because it interprets the period as a missing value. The $w. informat treats two or more periods in a field as character data.

Comparisons

The $w. informat is almost identical to the $CHARw. informat. However, $CHARw. does not trim leading blanks nor does it convert a single period in an input field to a blank, while $w. does both.

Example 

input @1 name $5.;
Data Line
Result 1
 
----+----1
 
XYZ
 
XYZ##
 
 XYZ
 
XYZ##
 
  .
 
 X YZ
 
X#YZ#
1The character # represents a blank space.
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