Physical location of a table

Patrick — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 10:45:55 GMT

Hi all

That's a follow up question to https://communities.sas.com/message/134147#134147 out of curiousity.

Proc Contents or sashelp.vmember gives us the physical path to a SAS table, eg:
proc sql;
select * from sashelp.vmember where libname='SASHELP' and memname='CLASS';
quit;

But the path given seems to be the library path. In case of a concatenated library like SASHELP there might be multiple same named tables in different directories (like CLASS).

Do you know about a way to actually determine which table will be used without having to write some code traversing through the concatenated paths looking for the table (eg. some dictionary table giving the path to the table actually used)?

Thanks

Patrick

Re: Physical location of a table

Tom — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 14:31:11 GMT

PROC CONTENTS lists the real location in the output with SAS 9.2 on Unix.

Use ODS to get the output of the EngineHost table into a dataset.

Re: Physical location of a table

Ksharp — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 03:21:05 GMT

"In case of a concatenated library like SASHELP there might be multiple same named tables in different directories (like CLASS)."

If there is a concatenated library which consist of several libraries, then the first appeared library 's CLASS will be used .

We know there can't be two tables have the same name in a same library. So this library's path is actually the table's path.

Ksharp

Re: Physical location of a table

Patrick — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 12:28:26 GMT

@Ksharp

That's exactly my question: How do I get the first occurrence of a table from a library with concatenated paths WITHOUT writing code traversing through these paths. Let's say SASHELP.CLASS in below listing is the first time used in

'C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\access\sashelp'. Which dictionary table or procedure like Proc Contents would tell me that?

@Tom

Currently I don't have access to SAS9.2 under UNIX. Running the Proc Contents code posted in the other thread with SAS9.3 under Windows gave me first a listing of all the paths and then a listing of all the tables. But it didn't tell me for a specific table where was taken from in these concatenated paths. Are you telling me that the Proc Contents report looks different with SAS9.2 under Unix?

Thanks

Patrick

And this is what I get in my environment:

proc sql;
select path
from sashelp.vmember
where libname='SASHELP' and memname='CLASS' and memtype='DATA'
;
quit;

Pathname
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
( 'C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\nls\en\SASCFG' 'C:\Program
Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\core\sashelp' 'C:\Program
Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\access\sashelp' 'C:\Program
Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\af\sashelp' 'C:\Program
Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\connect\sashelp' 'C:\Program
Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\creditscrnod\sashelp' 'C:\Program
Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\dmine\sashelp' 'C:\Program
Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\eis\sashelp' 'C:\Program
Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\ets\sashelp' 'C:\Program
Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\forecastmva\sashelp' 'C:\Program
Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\gis\sashelp' 'C:\Program
Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\graph\sashelp' 'C:\Program
Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\hpf\sashelp' 'C:\Program
Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\iml\sashelp' 'C:\Program
Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\insight\sashelp' 'C:\Program
Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\intrnet\sashelp' 'C:\Program
Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\inttech\sashelp' 'C:\Program

Or using Proc Contents:

proc contents data=sashelp._all_ nods; run;

Re: Physical location of a table

ballardw — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 14:26:48 GMT

If you want to know about SASHELP.CLASS, for example, why are you using _all_ in proc contents?

use proc contents data=sashelp.class.

My output includes:

Filename C:\Program Files\SAS\SASFoundation\9.2(32-bit)\core\sashelp\class.sas7bdat

topic Re: Physical location of a table in SAS Programming

Physical location of a table

Re: Physical location of a table

Re: Physical location of a table

Re: Physical location of a table

Re: Physical location of a table