topic Re: SAS Programs: Move file b/w directories: Error: "Shell escape is not valid in this SAS sess in SAS Programming

SAS Programs: Move file b/w directories: Error: "Shell escape is not valid in this SAS session"

Alok_Pal — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 18:43:54 GMT

Hi There,

I have a SAS program that is generating a csv report file and writing it to one of the work directory on server. I want the created file to be copied or moved over to another directory on server. For this I added following lines of code to my existing code but it errors out with error message saying "Shell escape is not valid in this SAS session".

%let dir1="%sysfunc(pathname(work))/FileName..csv";
%let dir2="//FileServerName/Dir1/XYZ/Reports/";
%sysexec move "&dir1" "&dir2";

Any other work around/ suggestions are most welcome.

Thanks in advance.

Re: SAS Programs: Move file b/w directories: Error: "Shell escape is not valid in this SAS sess

Reeza — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 19:05:20 GMT

FCOPY and/or PROC DOWNLOAD.

Yes, it's common for server side installations to restrict access to the OS, and using OS commands, which is your current approach.

FCOPY uses SAS built in tools.

But if your SAS has access to the directory, you should be able to export directly to there in the first place?

Re: SAS Programs: Move file b/w directories: Error: "Shell escape is not valid in this SAS sess

snoopy369 — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 19:05:50 GMT

I guess you probably have this issue:
http://support.sas.com/kb/41/058.html

If you're running this in EG on a server, you'll need to talk to your SAS Admin about whether you can have the OPTIONS XCMD permitted or not. If not, you'll have to find another option for this (such as running this command in a command file, .bat in SAS or a shell script in unix).