Read data files that has no carriage returns

Solution ID:	 	100000545	
Product:	 	SPSS Base 	
Title:
Reading raw data files that has no carriage returns 
Description:
Q. 
I have an ASCII data file I would like to analyze with SPSS, 
but the data is just one long stream, with no separation between 
records or fields, and no carriage returns. 
Is there a way I can get SPSS to read in this data? I have only 
been able to read the first record in the file, due to there 
being no carriage returns or any other delineating marks in 
the file. 
A. 
SPSS can read this data with the use of a FILE HANDLE command. 
If, for example, each record of a file named persons.dat 
is 147 characters long, with a person's name in positions 
33-65 and the person's age in positions 112-113, the commands 
to read those fields would be 
FILE HANDLE mydata / name='persons.dat'/ mode=image / lrecl=147. 
DATA LIST file=mydata / name 33-65 (a) age 112-113. 
The MODE=IMAGE syntax specifies that this data file is a fixed-length 
data file with no end-of-line character. LRECL means "logical record 
length" and is required with MODE=IMAGE. The DATA LIST command reads 
ASCII input files. By default, SPSS assumes a fixed-field layout 
such as the one indicated above.