What does the @ operator do in SAS

Question

Not able to search for the @ parameter in the search engines or the syntax.

What does the @ operator do in SAS? I am not able to find any references to it in the operators list as well: https://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lrcon/62955/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a000780367.htm

data dsfa.asdfa;
   infile asdfsadf;
   input @1 sdfs $12. @14 sdlfsda $10 sdlfsd $1.;
run;

Answer 1

It's not an operator, it's part of the INPUT statement and documented within the INPUT statement. There are trailing @ or @@ and then ones that come before variable names. In that case, it's telling SAS which column to read data from.

@n moves the pointer to column n.

Here's the link to the docs

Answer 2

In format input method we can read data values from raw data files by using 3 methods 1)Column Skip pointer(+n) 2)Column hold pointer(@n) 3)Column range(n.)

So in the below code: input @1 sdfs $12. @14 sdlfsda $10 sdlfsd $1.;

@1 means you are instructing SAS to read from first column upto 12 characters length @14 means you are instructing SAS to read from 14th column upto 10 characters length Note: @n means column number to start reading