Step-by-Step Programming with Base SAS 9.4

Handling Missing Values

Reading Missing Values

SAS uses a blank to represent a missing value of a character variable. For example, the data line for Brazil lacks the departure city from the United States:

Japan      5 San Francisco          Tokyo, Osaka
Italy      8 New York               Rome, Naples
Australia 12 Honolulu           Sydney, Brisbane
Venezuela  4 Miami            Caracas, Maracaibo
Brazil     4               Rio de Janeiro, Belem

As Data Set AIR.DEPARTURES shows, when the INPUT statement reads the data line for Brazil and determines that the value for USGate in columns 14-26 is missing, SAS assigns a missing value to USGate for that observation. The missing value is represented by a blank when printing.

One special case occurs when you read character data values with list input. In that case, you ...