Formats

$CHARw. Format

Writes standard character data.

Category:	Character
Alignment:	left

Syntax

$CHARw.

w

specifies the width of the output field.

Default:	8 if the length of variable is undefined; otherwise, the length of the variable
Range:	1-32767

The $CHARw. format is identical to the $w. format.
The $CHARw. and $w. formats do not trim leading blanks. To trim leading blanks, use the LEFT function to left align character data, or use the PUT statement with the colon (:) format modifier and the format of your choice to produce list output.
Use the following table to compare the SAS format $CHAR8. with notation in other programming languages:

Language Notation

SAS $CHAR8.

C char [8]

COBOL PIC x(8)

Fortran A8

PL/I A(8)

put @7 name $char4.;

Value of name	Results
	----+----1
XYZ	XYZ