topic Re: Libname assignment in SAS Programming

Libname assignment

gphunt — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 14:29:03 GMT

Is it possible to assign one libref to another without specifying the path twice? For example, something like:

libname xxx 'C:\folder_a';

libname yyy xxx;

instead of:

libname xxx 'C:\folder_a';

libname yyy 'C:\folder_a';

This would be very helpful for alot of situations in EG as well as modifying older programs.

Thanks.

Re: Libname assignment

FreelanceReinh — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 14:50:38 GMT

Hello @gphunt,

Yes, this is possible by using parentheses around the second libref:

libname yyy (xxx);

(Edit: This is explained under "Form 4" in the documentation of the LIBNAME statement and mostly used for concatenating two or more libraries.)

Re: Libname assignment

gphunt — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 14:56:35 GMT

Thanks, ReelanceReinhard!! I've been searching for that for quite awhile. This will be very helpful!

Gary

Re: Libname assignment

novinosrin — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 14:57:29 GMT

Thank you for sharing. Learned something new today. 🙂

Re: Libname assignment

Tom — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 15:46:40 GMT

Another possibility is to use the PATHNAME() function to find out where the other libref is pointing.

This probably will only work for simple examples where the first libref is pointing to physical folder(s).

libname xxx 'C:\folder_a';
libname yyy "%sysfunc(pathname(xxx))";

Also watch out as the format of the result is different depending on how the original libname statement was constructed. When ( ) are used in the original then do not add the quotes around the returned value.

libname xxx ('C:\folder_a' 'C:\folder_b');
libname yyy %sysfunc(pathname(xxx));

Re: Libname assignment

gphunt — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 15:50:19 GMT

Another great idea! Thanks, Tom.