What is indicated by the DSD option in a SAS infile statement?

The DSD option in a SAS infile statement is used to specify that the data being read may contain delimiters within quoted strings, effectively making it "delimiter sensitive." This option tells SAS to treat consecutive delimiters as missing values and to allow the use of quotation marks to encapsulate fields that may contain delimiters themselves. This is particularly useful in scenarios where data fields can contain the delimiter as part of their content, ensuring that the data is read correctly without improperly splitting fields.

When you use the DSD option, SAS will also automatically handle the default delimiters for reading the data, which is typically a comma for CSV files. This helps maintain the integrity of the data and allows SAS to correctly interpret the intended structure of the data entries.