topic Re: How to change the CFG-FILE that sets the WORK library location without destroying the universe? in New SAS User

How to change the CFG-FILE that sets the WORK library location without destroying the universe?

Kzual — Wed, 28 May 2025 18:02:32 GMT

Hi, I'm a complete and total noob about anything SAS-related, I registered an account just now just to ask this - if posted in the wrong forum I am sorry, please point me to where it belongs or move post accordingly. I have this user who asked me about changing the location of the cfg-file that determines the location of the WORK library -> it's currently saved on an external hard-disk drive, she wants it locally on her computer. I have no idea what a WORK library is and what it entails to change the location of the file that manages it, so I have no idea if I can tell the user if and how we can do that. I've found some complicated articles saying how to do it, but none explicitely confirmed the scope of how it impacts how SAS behaves as seen by the user. Her SAS version is 9.04 (there was a long string of numbers and letters following 9.04, please let me know if that's relevant information to add here) and this is the list of products she has:

---Base SAS Software

---SAS/STAT

---SAS/GRAPH

---SAS/ETS

---SAS/IML

---SAS/Secure 168-bit

---SAS/Secure Windows

---SAS Enterprise Guide

---SAS/ACCESS Interface to PC Files

---SAS/IML Studio

---SAS Workspace Server for Local Access

---High Performance Suite

I'm not even sure what others questions, if any, I should ask to ascertain wether or not she can/should do this, and how. Any and all help will be greatly appreciated thank you.

Sidenote: I mostly create email accounts, swap monitors and change cables for a living but made the mistake of telling my boss I want to do more. This is the result XD. Please be gentle.

Re: How to change the CFG-FILE that sets the WORK library location without destroying the universe?

Tom — Wed, 28 May 2025 18:07:49 GMT

First question is how is the user running SAS?

Do they have PC-SAS installed on their personal computer? PC-SAS only runs on Windows machines.

Or perhaps they are running SAS on some shared server? If so what operating system is that machine using? Is it Linux, Windows or IBM Mainframe (Z/OS is what I think IBM is calling their operating system now).

Or perhaps they are not actually running SAS directly at all. Perhaps they are using some other interface that calls SAS for them. Are they using Enterprise Guide? Or SAS/Studio? Or perhaps some other interface from SAS?

Also check what version of SAS they are running. They can just run this simple program and SAS will show the version in the LOG.

%put &=sysvlong;

And if they are using some interface like Enterprise Guide or SAS/Study they should be able to find an About xxx in the menus that will show the version of that tool.

Re: How to change the CFG-FILE that sets the WORK library location without destroying the universe?

antonbcristina — Wed, 28 May 2025 18:24:44 GMT

Hi @Kzual, this post might be useful for the user: https://communities.sas.com/t5/New-SAS-User/Changing-SAS-s-work-library-path/td-p/879629.

Re: How to change the CFG-FILE that sets the WORK library location without destroying the universe?

Kzual — Wed, 28 May 2025 19:03:50 GMT

User has SAS installed directly on her Windows computer and software version is 9.04.01M7P080520

Re: How to change the CFG-FILE that sets the WORK library location without destroying the universe?

Ksharp — Thu, 29 May 2025 01:23:36 GMT

1) If you really like to change path of WORK library. You need add the following line into SASV9.CFG .

2) The most conventient way is using option 'user=' as I mentioned in another post.

libname x v9 'd:\temp\';
options user=x;

data class;
 set sashelp.class;
run;

And you will see all the table from WORK library are in USER library ,and they are retained, would not be removed even after closing sas windows.