Writes character data of varying length.
| Valid: |
in DATA step
|
| Category: |
Character
|
| Alignment: |
left
|
|
$VARYINGw. length-variable
|
-
w
-
specifies the maximum width of the output
field for any output line or output file record.
| Default: |
8 if the length of the
variable is undefined. Otherwise, the default is the length of
the variable |
| Range: |
1-32767 |
-
length-variable
-
specifies a numeric variable that contains
the length of the current value of the character variable. SAS obtains the
value of the length-variable by reading it directly
from a field that is described in an INPUT statement, reading the value of
a variable in an existing SAS data set, or calculating its value.
| Requirement: |
You must specify length-variable immediately after $VARYINGw.
in a SAS statement. |
| Restriction: |
Length-variable cannot be an array reference. |
| Tip: |
If the value of length-variable is 0, negative, or missing, SAS writes nothing
to the output field. If the value of length-variable
is greater than 0 but less than w, SAS writes
the number of characters that are specified by length-variable. If length-variable is greater
than or equal to w, SAS writes w columns. |
Use $VARYINGw.
when the length of a character value differs from record to record. After
writing a data value with $VARYINGw., the pointer's
position is the first column after the value.
An existing data set variable contains the length of a variable. The data
values and the results follow the explanation of this SAS statement:
put @10 name $varying12. varlen;
NAME is a character
variable of length 12 that contains values that vary from 1 to 12 characters
in length. VARLEN is a numeric variable in the same data set that contains
the actual length of NAME for the current observation.
|
Value of name* |
Results |
|
----+----1----+----2----+
|
New York 8
|
New York
|
Toronto 7
|
Toronto
|
Buenos Aires 12
|
Buenos Aires
|
Tokyo 5
|
Tokyo
|
| *
The value of NAME appears before the value of VARLEN. |
Use the LENGTH function to determine the length of a variable. The data values
and the results follow the explanation of these SAS statements:
varlen=length(name);
put @10 name $varying12. varlen;
The assignment statement determines
the length of the varying-length variable. The variable VARLEN contains this
length and becomes the length-variable argument
to the $VARYING12. format.
|
Values* |
Results |
|
----+----1----+----2----+
|
New York
|
New York
|
Toronto
|
Toronto
|
Buenos Aires
|
Buenos Aires
|
Tokyo
|
Tokyo
|
| *
The value of NAME appears before the value of VARLEN. |
Copyright © 2011 by SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.
