Reading Variable-Length Fields (3)

Reading Variable-Length Records

Reading Variable-Length Fields

Creating a Varying Size Length-Variable

Now let's think about how to give instructions for reading the values for Name. First, you need to create a length-variable that contains the length of each raw data value for Name.

Let's call the length-variable namelen. As you can see, the value of namelen varies.

Raw Data File Phonedat

1---+----10---+----20

1802JOHNSON2123

1803BARKER2142

1804EDMUNDSON2325

1805RIVERS2543

1806MASON2646

> > > > >

namelen= 7 namelen= 6 namelen= 9 namelen= 6 namelen= 5

     data perm.phones; 
        infile phondat length=reclen;
        input ID 4. @;
        namelen=??????

But remember, each record contains only three fields and the width of both ID and PhoneExt is 4 in every record. So, the values for ID and PhoneExt take up only 8 spaces in each record. Therefore, the value of namelen is the length of each record (reclen) minus the length of ID and PhoneExt(8).

     data perm.phones; 
        infile phondat length=reclen;
        input ID 4. @;
        namelen=reclen-8;