topic Re: RECFM LRECL in SAS Data Science

RECFM LRECL

noobs — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 22:58:08 GMT

Hello SAS users,

Can somebody please shed light on these two keywords: RECFM and LRECL

The SAS log has following note

Note: The infile '...\sample.dat' is:

File Name = ...\sample.dat

RECFM=V LRECL=256

Seems like it is something to do with Record, however what is V?

Thankfully,

Dhanashree Gadkari

Re: RECFM LRECL

Tom — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 01:54:21 GMT

LRECL is Logical RECord length. How many characters in a line.

RECFM is RECord ForMat.

V is Variable which means that the lines are not all the same length. End of line is determined by special characters. Normally a LineFeed (0A base 16) on Unix machines and CarriageReturn and LineFeed (0D0A base 16) on Windows machines.

Read up on JCL to see where these terms come from. Job Control Language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Re: RECFM LRECL

noobs — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 11:31:40 GMT

Got it, well explained.

Do fixed length records get assigned F for RECFM?

Re: RECFM LRECL

pali — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 13:05:15 GMT

LRECL is logical record length.It denotes the length of input buffer which is created in datastep processing. Data flows from input buffer to pdv to your dataset in datastep processing.

Input buffer holds record of the text file that is being read in a datastep. By default the length if input buffer is 256 bytes (which means if you are reading a file which has more than 256 bytes in a row then you have to increase this limit else SAS will not be able to read complete data from that row).

RECFM can be fixed or it can be Variable. A file's record format is said to be fixed if you can not write more than specified byte in a row. Where as in files like notepad or wordpad you can write as much data in a row as you want. This makes .txt or .dat files as Variable length file.

Re: RECFM LRECL

Marilyn — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 20:57:42 GMT

I just use these on the mainframe. It seems they aren't required as much with PC SAS, etc and I try to stay away from the mainframe when I can