Introduction Some operating systems have different types of record formats for external files. An external file that has a fixed-length record format has an end-of-record marker after a predetermined number of columns. A typical record length is 80 columns.

When records contain fields that have varying lengths or a varying number of fields, a variable-length record format uses space more efficiently than a fixed-length record format.

 

Setting Up Filerefs for Practices in This Lesson

Time to Complete This lesson contains pages and takes approximately 30 minutes to complete.

Objectives In this lesson, you learn to determine the length of each record read character variables that have varying lengths. You can also review how to use a line-hold specifier to hold the current record execute SAS statements based on the value of a variable explicitly write an observation to a data set.

Prerequisites Before taking this lesson, you should complete the following lessons: .