Formatting options

Formatting options for reading variables include:

Automatic

The format is determined based on an evaluation of all the data values.

Numeric

Valid values include numbers, a leading plus or minus sign, and a decimal indicator.

String

Valid values include virtually any keyboard characters and embedded blanks. For delimited files, you can specify the number of characters in the value, up to a maximum of 32,767. By default, the value is set to the number of characters to the longest string value encountered for the selected variable(s) in the first 250 rows of the file. For fixed-width files, the number of characters in string values is defined by the placement of variable break lines.

Date/Time

Valid values include dates of the general format dd-mm-yyyy, mm/dd/yyyy, dd.mm.yyyy, yyyy/mm/dd, hh:mm:ss, and a variety of other date and time formats. Months can be represented in digits, Roman numerals, or three-letter abbreviations, or they can be fully spelled out. Select a date format from the list.

Dollar

Valid values are numbers with an optional leading dollar sign and optional commas as thousands separators.

Comma

Valid values include numbers that use a period as a decimal indicator and commas as thousands separators.

Dot

Valid values include numbers that use a comma as a decimal indicator and periods as thousands separators.

Do not import

Omit the selected variable(s) from the imported data file.