SAS | How to read character using Ampersand(&)

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: