SAS table string length (limit)

Question

I am creating a SAS table in which one of the fields has to holds a huge string.

Following is my table (TABLE name = MKPLOGS4):

OBS    RNID        DESCTEXT
       ---------   -----------
1       123         This is some text which is part of the record. I want this to appear
2       123         concatenated kinda like concat_group() from MYSQL but for some reason
3       123         SAS does not have such functionality. Now I am having trouble with
4       123         String concatenation.
5       124         Hi there old friend of mine, hope you are enjoying the weather
6       124         Are you sure this is not your jacket, okay then. Will give charity.
.       .           .
.       .           .
.       .           .

and I have to get a Table similar to this (table name = MKPLOGSA):

OBS    RNID        DESCTEXT
       ---------   -----------
1       123         This is some text which is part of the record. I want this to appear concatenated kinda like concat_group() from MYSQL but for some reason SAS does not have such functionality. Now I am having trouble with String concatenation.
2       124         Hi, there old friend of mine, hope you are enjoying the weather Are you sure this is not your jacket, okay then. Will give charity.
.       .           .
.       .           .
.       .           .

So, after trying unsuccessfully with SQL, I came up with the following SAS code (please note I am very new at SAS):

DATA MKPLOGSA (DROP = DTEMP DTEXT);
  SET MKPLOGS4;
  BY RNID;

  RETAIN DTEXT;

  IF FIRST.RNID THEN
  DO;
  DTEXT = DESCTEXT;
  DELETE;
  END;
  ELSE IF LAST.RNID THEN
  DO;
    DTEMP = CATX(' ',DTEXT,DESCTEXT);
    DESCTEXT = DTEMP;
  END;
  ELSE
  DO;
    DTEMP = CATX(' ',DTEXT,DESCTEXT);
    DTEXT = DTEMP;

  DELETE;
  END;

The SAS log is producing this warning message:

WARNING: IN A CALL TO THE CATX FUNCTION, THE BUFFER ALLOCATED 
FOR THE RESULT WAS NOT LONG ENOUGH TO CONTAIN THE CONCATENATION 
OF ALL THE ARGUMENTS. THE CORRECT RESULT WOULD CONTAIN 229 CHARACTERS, 
BUT THE ACTUAL RESULT MAY EITHER BE TRUNCATED TO 200 CHARACTER(S) OR 
BE COMPLETELY BLANK, DEPENDING ON THE CALLING ENVIRONMENT. THE 
FOLLOWING NOTE INDICATES THE LEFT-MOST ARGUMENT THAT CAUSED TRUNCATION.

Followed by the message (for the SAS data step I posted here):

NOTE: ARGUMENT 3 TO FUNCTION CATX AT LINE 100 COLUMN 15 IS INVALID.

Please note that in my sample data table (MKPLOGS4), each line of string for the field DESCTEXT can be upto 116 characters and there is no limit as to how many lines of description text/recordID.

The output I am getting has only the last line of description:

OBS   RNID   DESCTEXT
      ----   --------
1     123    String concatenation.
2     124    Are you sure this is not your jacket, okay then. Will give charity.
.     .      .
.     .      .
.     .      .

I have the following questions:

. is there something wrong with my code? . is there a limit to SAS string concatenation? Can I override this? If yes, please provide code.

If you have a suggestion, I would really appreciate if you can post your version of code. This is not school work/homework.

Answer 1

Since SAS stores character data as blank-padded fixed length strings, it is usually not a good idea to store a large amount of text in the dataset. However, if you must, then you can create a character type variable with a length of up to 32767 characters. If you don't mind doing some extra I/O, here is an easy way.

   /* test data -- same id repeated over multiple observations i.e., in a "long-format" */
   data one;
     input rnid desctext & :$200.;
   cards;
   123 This is some text which is part of the record. I want this to appear
   123 concatenated kinda like concat_group() from MYSQL but for some reason
   123 SAS does not have such functionality. Now I am having trouble with
   123 String concatenation.
   124 Hi there old friend of mine, hope you are enjoying the weather
   124 Are you sure this is not your jacket, okay then. Will give charity.
   ;
   run;
   /* re-shape from the long to the wide-format. assumes that data are sorted by rnid. */
   proc transpose data=one out=two;
     by rnid;
     var desctext;
   run;
   /* concatenate col1, col2, ... vars into single desctext */
   data two;
     length rnid 8 desctext $1000;
     keep rnid desctext;
     set two;
     desctext = catx(' ', of col:);
   run;