topic Re: Searching for a file with partial name in SAS Programming

Searching for a file with partial name

AJ_Brien — Thu, 24 Sep 2020 18:44:24 GMT

Hello mentors,

I'm in a situation where I need to check the existence of a file in sas grid. The filename however has a date, which can be any date of the month, so there is no way to predict the full file name. For eg. in january, filename could be 'file_jan20_02jan20.sas7bdat', but in feb it could be 'file_feb20_08feb20.sas7bdat'. so there is absolutely no way to predict the right filename and look for it.

I usually use the following code to check the existence of the file, and I searched around but couldn't find a way to look for partial names such that if file: file_%SYSFUNC(TODAY(),monyy7.)_*.sas7bdat. Trying to do something along these lines using a wildcard.

data _null_;
rc=fileexist("/users/abc/filename.sas7bdat");                                                                                                                                   
if rc > 0 then call symput ('flag',"Y");
else call symput ('flag',"N");
run;
%put &=flag;

Appreciate your guidance so very much!

Re: Searching for a file with partial name

Shmuel — Thu, 24 Sep 2020 19:16:51 GMT

Do you have already a libref to "/users/abc" ?

Suppose you don't have then:

libname mydata "/users/abc";

%let flag = "N";
data _null_;
   set sashelp.table;
        if libnmae = 'MYDATA' and
          lowcase(substr,memname,1,7) = 'file_jan'  /* or feb or ... */
         then do;
                 if memname = "<full data set name>" /* omit .sas7bdat */
                    then call symput('flag', "Y");
         end;
run;

Re: Searching for a file with partial name

AJ_Brien — Thu, 24 Sep 2020 20:05:26 GMT

That totally makes sense, thank you for the direction!