SAS can read data from various sources which includes many file

formats. The file formats used in SAS environment is discussed below.

ASCII(Text) Data Set

Delimited Data

Excel Data

Hierarchical Data

Reading ASCII(Text) Data Set

These are the files which contain the data on text format. The data is
usually delimited by a space, but there can be different types of
delimiters also which SAS can handle. Lets consider an ASCII file
containing
the
employee
data.
We
read
this
file
using
the Infile statement available in SAS.

Example
In the below example we read the data file named emp_data.txt from
the local environment.
data TEMP;
infile
'/folders/myfolders/sasuser.v94/TutorialsPoint/emp_data.txt';
input empID empName $ Salary Dept $ DOJ date9. ;
format DOJ date9.;
run;
PROC PRINT DATA=TEMP;
RUN;

When the above code is executed, we get the following output.

Reading Delimited Data

These are the data files in which the column values are separated by a
delimiting character like a comma or pipeline etc. In this case we use
the dlmoption in the infile statement.

Example
In the below example we read the data file named emp.csv from the
local environment.
data TEMP;
infile
'/folders/myfolders/sasuser.v94/TutorialsPoint/emp.csv' dlm=",";
input empID empName $ Salary Dept $ DOJ date9. ;
format DOJ date9.;
run;
PROC PRINT DATA=TEMP;
RUN;

When the above code is executed, we get the following output.

Reading Excel Data

SAS can directly read an excel file using the import facility. As seen in the
chapter SAS data sets, it can handle a wide variety of file types including
MS excel. Assuming the file emp.xls is available locally in the SAS
environment.

Example
FILENAME REFFILE
"/folders/myfolders/TutorialsPoint/emp.xls"
TERMSTR=CR;
PROC IMPORT DATAFILE=REFFILE
DBMS=XLS
OUT=WORK.IMPORT;
GETNAMES=YES;
RUN;
PROC PRINT DATA=WORK.IMPORT RUN;

The above code reads the data from excel file and gives the same output
as above two file types.

Reading Hierarchical Files

In these files the data is present in hierarchical format. For a given
observation there is a header record below which many detail records are

mentioned. The number of details records can vary from one observation
to another. Below is an illustration of a hierarchical file.
In the below file the details of each employee under each department is
listed. The first record is the header record mentioning the department
and the next record few records starting with DTLS are the details
record.
DEPT:IT
DTLS:1:Rick:623
DTLS:3:Mike:611
DTLS:6:Tusar:578
DEPT:OPS
DTLS:7:Pranab:632
DTLS:2:Dan:452
DEPT:HR
DTLS:4:Ryan:487
DTLS:2:Siyona:452

Example
To read the hierarchical file we use the below code in which we identify
the header record with an IF clause and use a do loop to process the
details record.
data employees(drop=Type);
length Type $ 3 Department
empID $ 3 empName $ 10 Empsal 3 ;
retain Department;
infile
'/folders/myfolders/TutorialsPoint/empdtls.txt' dlm=':';
input Type $ @;
if Type='DEP' then
input Department $;
else do;
input empID empName $ Empsal ;
output;
end;
run;
PROC PRINT DATA=employees;
RUN;

When the above code is executed, we get the following output.