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SAS | How to read character using Ampersand(&)

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We can use ampersand (&) to notify SAS to read the variable until there are two or more spaces encounter as a delimiter. This technique is always useful when the variable contains two or more words.

For example:

Actual Input: "Geeks for Geeks" 
Expected Input: "GeeksforGeeks"

Example 1: There are 2 spaces before 25, 32 and 30 in example code below.




data example1;
input ID Name & $30. Score;
cards;
1 ShubhamMaurya  25
2 SaurabhPandey  32
3 NikitaChaudhary  30
;
proc print;
run;


Output:

Example 2: When a variable contains 2 or more than 2 words.

  • In this scenario, we have a space between First Name and Last Name and we want to store both the first and last names in a single variable.
  • In this case, Colon modifier (:) does not work for a variable having multiple words.




data example2;
input ID Name & $30. Score;
cards;
1 Shubham Maurya  25
2 Saurabh Pandey  32
3 Nikita Chaudhary  30
;
proc print;
run;


Output:


Last Updated : 23 Jul, 2019
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