topic Re: Error when reading editor file in SAS Programming

Error when reading editor file

Maria_decibel — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 13:19:57 GMT

Hi,

I have trouble reading an editor file - can anyone identify what is happening? Thank you!

Re: Error when reading editor file

ballardw — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 13:40:13 GMT

Since you did not include anything about what was actually attempted we cannot tell what is actually happening.

For LOG entries copy the from the log the entire data step or procedure along with all notes, warnings and errors. Paste into the forum into a code box opened using the forum's </> icon.

The code box preserves text formatting. And since it would be text we can copy and show suggested changes to code or easily highlight areas of concern. We can't do either with pictures.

Typically files that have .SAS extension are programs. So what are you doing to that program file?

Re: Error when reading editor file

Shmuel — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 14:41:42 GMT

Try to open the file with some non-SAS editor, like notepad++ and check if some characters are damaged, retype it, save and try again to read into the sas editor.

Re: Error when reading editor file

FreelanceReinh — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 15:41:26 GMT

Hi @Maria_decibel and welcome to the SAS Support Communities!

I was able to replicate your issue with a text file containing both a byte-order mark (BOM) at the beginning and an "illegal" combination of bytes (i.e., "illegal" for UTF-8 encoding) further down in the file. The Enhanced Editor did not open it and I also got these notes and the error message in the log.

However, using a SAS session with Unicode support none of these problems occurred. Only the "illegal" characters were replaced with a special question mark symbol. In my local SAS installation (under Windows) the start icon for "SAS 9.4 (Unicode support)" can be found in a subfolder "Additional Languages" of the folder "SAS" where the usual start icon ("SAS 9.4 (English)") resides. Actually it calls the same sas.exe, but with a specific config file:

...\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.4\nls\u8\sasv9.cfg

This should help to see how many of these "illegal" characters are present and where they are in the program file. You can then use a hex editor (see @Shmuel's suggestion) to find out what kind of "illegal" characters are in those places and finally decide how to deal with them.

Re: Error when reading editor file

AMSAS — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 19:06:39 GMT

You may also want to review Usage Note 64089: Frequently asked questions about preparing your site to use UTF-8 SAS® session encoding

I suspect you have some kind of encoding issue going on