Q: SAS Column Input Truncating - sas

Question

I am taking an intro to SAS course and am having serious issues reading some data in.
This is the code I have thus far (the assignment tells us to use Column input) is as follows:
DATA shirtCol;
INPUT Name $ 1-6 Color $ 8-13 Price 15-19 ShippingCost 21-24;
DATALINES;
Large Red 18.97 0.25
Medium Blue 24.68 1.10
XLarge Black 29.99 1.75
Small Orange 15.89 0.50
;
RUN;
PROC print data=shirtCol;
RUN;
I am using SAS university edition to run this code and when I run the program the Price and Shipping column only have one number after the decimal point. Is there anything I am doing wrong? How can I make it so the program no longer truncates my output?

Answer 1

It seems that SAS studio counts the blanks spaces as columns. Try removing the leading blanks before your input:
DATA shirtCol;
INPUT Name $ 1-6 Color $ 8-13 Price 15-19 ShippingCost 21-24;
DATALINES;
Large Red 18.97 0.25
Medium Blue 24.68 1.10
XLarge Black 29.99 1.75
Small Orange 15.89 0.50
;
RUN;

Answer 2

Count the number of characters in your data lines to see why it is not reading what you want. Either correct the column numbers in your INPUT statement or remove the extra blanks you seem to have added to every line. Inserting a ruler line can help.
DATA shirtCol;
INPUT Name $ 1-6 Color $ 8-13 Price 15-19 ShippingCost 21-24;
*---+---10----+---20----+---30;
DATALINES;
Large Red 18.97 0.25
Medium Blue 24.68 1.10
XLarge Black 29.99 1.75
Small Orange 15.89 0.50
;
RUN;
Using a consistent indentation style can avoid this type of issue. I never indent the DATALINES; statement. Actually I never use DATALINES; statements, but I never indent CARDS; statements and I use them a lot. :)
If that doesn't work then make sure you haven't introduced tabs to replace spaces in your data. I think that SAS/Studio might have trouble with actually storing the tabs in the code lines that it sends to SAS to execute. You can add an INFILE statement with the EXPANDTABS option to have SAS expand the tabs into spaces for you. While you are at it you might want to add the TRUNCOVER option also.
infile datalines expandtabs truncover ;