topic Create a blank SAS program file at execution time in SAS Programming

Create a blank SAS program file at execution time

Ramakanthkrovi — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 04:47:18 GMT

Hi Guys,

Is it possible to create a sas program file (initially without any code) in a given folder (library)?

Note: I am not asking about creating a dataset, I need to create a blank sas program file during run time. Like invoking a macro should automatically create a filename.sas program in a folder.

Regards,

Ramakanth

Re: Create a blank SAS program file at execution time

SASKiwi — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 05:21:15 GMT

Yes, a SAS program is stored as a text file on disk which you can create in a DATA step. Why do you want to do this?

data _null_;
  file pgm "C:\Temp\MySASProgram.sas";
  put "* A Comment;";
run;

Re: Create a blank SAS program file at execution time

andreas_lds — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 05:21:54 GMT

Can't see any reason to do this, but a data-step can do this:

data _null_;
   file "PATH_TO_FILE\empty.sas";
run;

Re: Create a blank SAS program file at execution time

Patrick — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 05:25:34 GMT

One way to go:

data _null_;
  stop;
  file 'c:\temp\test2.sas';
run;

Re: Create a blank SAS program file at execution time

Ramakanthkrovi — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 05:33:13 GMT

I just wanted to create a file and write a program using a macro. Sorry if that wasn't clear in the initial question.

Re: Create a blank SAS program file at execution time

SASKiwi — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 07:10:00 GMT

With macro code you usually don't need to write program code to a separate file, you can just generate the code from within a SAS macro just by calling it:

data _null_;
  file pgm "C:\Temp\MySASProgram.sas";
  put "* A Comment;";
run;

%include "C:\Temp\MySASProgram.sas";

* Above code does exactly the same thing as the following macro;

%macro comment;

* A Comment;

%mend comment;
%comment;

Re: Create a blank SAS program file at execution time

RW9 — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 08:07:15 GMT

You do not even need to write to a file, just use call execute, and no file writing involved. Saved I/O.