$w. Informat

Reads standard character data.

Category: Character
Alias: $Fw.

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.