How to manipulate sas7bdat files? - sas

Question

I'm working with a sas7dbat file that was created erroneously and trying to fix it. When the file was created, the data was all input unto a single column instead of multiples, and I can't figure out how to manipulate it to do this. I thought I'd be able to use infile and make the dlm "|" with dsd to remove the quotations on the name column, but it seems that this problem is harder than it looks.
I basically want to turn that one column into the six it was supposed to be and delete the quotations from the names. Here's what it looks like in SAS:
SAS7dbat
And here's the datalines in case they're needed:
1 0017|2020-04-09|"Jason Nguyen"|122L|500.0|$404.82
2 0017|2020-04-09|"Jason Nguyen"|407XX|100.0|$201.95
3 0177|2020-04-05|"Glenda Johnson"|144L|100.0|$91.01
4 0177|2020-04-05|"Glenda Johnson"|188X|100.0|$70.76
5 0177|2020-04-05|"Glenda Johnson"|733|2.0|$101,230.00
6 0177|2020-04-05|"Glenda Johnson"|777|5.0|$106.29
7 1843|2020-04-03|"George Smith"|122|100.0|$60.64
8 1843|2020-04-03|"George Smith"|122L|10.0|$303.18
9 1843|2020-04-03|"George Smith"|144L|50.0|$91.01
10 1843|2020-04-03|"George Smith"|188S|3.0|$52,629.48
11 1843|2020-04-03|"George Smith"|855W|1.0|$92,210.41
12 1843|2020-04-03|"George Smith"|908X|1.0|$51,920.87
13 9888|2020-04-11|"Sharon Lu"|100W|1,000.0|$20.14
14 9888|2020-04-11|"Sharon Lu"|122|50.0|$60.64
(each line is one column inside SAS)

Answer 1

Go back and fix the import code would be my suggestion otherwise use the SCAN() function.
data want;
set have;
var1 = scan(variableName, 1, '|');
var2 = input(scan(variableName, 2, '|'), yymmdd.);
format var2 date9.;
var3 = dequote(scan(variableName, 3, '|'));
....
run;
Another option is to write the file as is back to a text file and then import it using the DLM='|' option.
Untested:
proc export data=have outfile='myfile.txt' dbms=dlm replace;
delimiter='';
run;
proc import out=want datafile='myfile.txt' dbms=dlm replace;
delimiter='|';
run;
Given that it's only 6 variables though you may as well write the data step for that code anyways.