topic SAS program to stop execute or abort if there is a WARNING in the first step in SAS Programming

SAS program to stop execute or abort if there is a WARNING in the first step

Babloo — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 06:00:06 GMT

I've 5 data steps. If I execute and if there is a WARNING in the first step, I do not want the other steps to execute. Is there a way to achieve this?

Re: SAS program to stop execute or abort if there is a WARNING in the first step

s_lassen — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 07:18:25 GMT

The easiest way is to check the SYSCC automatic macro variable. This variables has two advantages:

You can set it
It shows the maximum error or warning code since you set it:

%let SYSCC=0;

Data x; 
/*  this is your first data step */
run;

data _null_;
  if &syscc then abort cancel file;
run;

I used the CANCEL FILE version of the ABORT statement, as this will not terminate your SAS session if you are testing in oline SAS.

If you only want to exit on errors, you should check for SYSCC>4, 1 to 4 are warnings.

Re: SAS program to stop execute or abort if there is a WARNING in the first step

RW9 — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 14:33:09 GMT

The question should really be, why does the datastep cause errors/warnings? First off, a warning may not fail the following steps, that is a key difference between warning and error. Second, you should be coding "in a defensive manner". What this means is pre-empting and handling issues, if code is throwing errors/warnings later on and your input hasn't changed (as it wont as you will have an import agreement/import process), then the code was not correctly coded first time. Proper testing and robust coding will avoid these issues.