My approach is to implement programs that don't have errors, warnings or unitialized variable notes to start with. That means something has changed if I then run the program and such messages are written.
Also I run all production programs via a scheduler where an email will be triggered if there is an error so I only need to look at programs that generate an email. I then check the bottom of the SAS log to see if there is an error summary which looks like this:
ERROR: Errors printed on pages 710,714,716,722,723,724,726,727,735,740,741,742,743,745,746,755,756,757,758,759,760,766,767,768,770,
771,772,774,776,777,778,779,780,781,782,783,784,785,786,787,791,792,793.
I then only need to investigate page 710 to start with. By following simple processes like this you can reduce your log searching considerably.
Also running your programs in SAS EG or SAS Studio will produce a log summary of errors and warnings and there are function keys to search through these:
... View more