topic Re: Specifying file path in data step in SAS Programming

Specifying file path in data step

abak — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 18:42:16 GMT

Just gained ownership over some sas code that is not working at current:

data step has a merge statement that references a "master.sas7bdat" data set the following way:

merge msa$f..master(in = b);

where $f = module

However, the location of the file is ~msa/module/data and it returns with an error that there is no libname defined as msamodule.

Long story short-I am lost on how to properly specify the path, (and I don't know why the code suddenly broke when I gained ownership over this issue either).

Re: Specifying file path in data step

Reeza — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 18:54:29 GMT

Can you post the exact code, that doesn't look correct.

Re: Specifying file path in data step

ballardw — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 20:39:27 GMT

Are you sure the character $ in this code is what is actually in the code file?

merge msa$f..master(in = b);

I would more likely expect to see

merge msa&f..master(in = b);

which would expect the presence of a macro variable named F whose value is used to reference an existing library whose name starts with the letters MSA among a number of libraries. A further clue is the two periods in the statement as that is proper for used of a macro variable followed by an element that should contain a period such as the separator between a library name and the data set.

Suppose I had SAS libraries named:

msanew

msaold

msatest.

If I execute

%let f = new; assigning a value to a macro variable named f, then

msa&f would resolve to msanew when used only as a library reference and

msa&f..master would resolve to msanew.master where a data set name was needed.

Re: Specifying file path in data step

abak — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 23:28:19 GMT

You are both right. The code uses a & not a $.

Exact Code:

data _null_;
call symput("f","module");
run;

data cleanmaster2;
merge msa&f..master(in=b)

Re: Specifying file path in data step

abak — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 14:55:35 GMT

Yes, as stated above for the other contributor: THe code is

data _null_;
call symput("f","module");
run;

data cleanmaster2;
merge msa&f..master(in=b)

....etc

But I still don't know how to specify the path msa/module/data.master.sas (master is the name of the sas data set I need to pull in)

Re: Specifying file path in data step

Reeza — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 15:52:13 GMT

Look for something like the following:

libname msa&f 'path to folder here';

That sets the path to the msa folder and is what you need to change.

Re: Specifying file path in data step

ballardw — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 17:24:23 GMT

@abak wrote:

data _null_;
call symput("f","module");
run;

data cleanmaster2;
merge msa&f..master(in=b)

....etc

this code, and a Libname statement using msa&f will generate errors. Library names are limited to 8 characters.

msamodule would be 9 characters and hence invalid.