topic Re: USER Prompt window using SAS in Unix in SAS Programming

USER Prompt window using SAS in Unix

venkibhu — Sat, 09 Jun 2018 12:47:03 GMT

Dear All,

I have a program some thing like below (and the file is added to a source control)

%let data = source.adsl;

%let var = age;

%let proc_to_run = mean;

%macro procs();
%if &proc_to_run eq mean %then %do;
proc means data = &data;var &var;run;
%end;
%else %if &proc_to_run eq freq %then %do;
proc freq data = a;table &var;run;
%end;
%else %put selected procedure is invalid;
%mend;
%procs;

To, change the parameter values I need to check out and check in the program every time.

To avoid that, i taught to enter the values during the execution time by prompting a window with three parameters.

One for input dataset, second is for analysis variable and third is for procedure to execute (by listing the available procedures).

I found the below code on net,

** This code is for the SAS windowing environment only. **/

/** %WINDOW defines the prompt **/
%window info
  #5 @5 'Please enter userid:'
  #5 @26 id 8 attr=underline
  #7 @5 'Please enter password:'
  #7 @28 pass 8 attr=underline display=no;

/** %DISPLAY invokes the prompt **/
%display info;

%put userid entered was &id;
%put password entered was &pass;

Which is suitable for windows environment. Is there anyway to achieve the same in UNIX environment ?

Thanks,

Venkat.

Re: USER Prompt window using SAS in Unix

Tom — Sat, 09 Jun 2018 16:46:17 GMT

Did you try it? It has always worked for me.

Make sure that you are using X-windows and not just dumb terminal.

Re: USER Prompt window using SAS in Unix

venkibhu — Sat, 09 Jun 2018 23:45:18 GMT

Hi Tom,

I tried but that is not working when I run on unix server.

Can you provide some more details about the x-windows and how you have achieved...

Thanks in Advance,

Venkat.

Re: USER Prompt window using SAS in Unix

Tom — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 04:12:25 GMT

How are you starting SAS. Normally I open a X terminal window on the UNIX server (running sas xterm, dtterm, etc).

When you do that you should have an environment variable named DISPLAY that should look something like hostname:n where hostname is the name of the host where your X Windows Server software is running and the number after the colon is which screen on that X windows server your terminal is running. Then to run SAS interactively you just type the command sas at the command prompt.

If instead you just have a X windows server running, but you are not running a X windows compatible terminal window then you might need to add the -display option to the command line to tell SAS what X windows screen to open the interactive SAS windows.