topic Re: Documentation for BASE option in LIBNAME statement in SAS Programming

Documentation for BASE option in LIBNAME statement

Paul_de_Barros — Mon, 07 Jun 2021 13:13:05 GMT

The topic linked below has a brief explanation of the BASE option. The accepted answer has links to the documentation, but the links are broken (possibly because they were posted 5 years ago). Where can I find the current documentation on using the BASE option in a LIBNAME statement?

https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Programming/Base-option-in-libname-statement/m-p/298243

Re: Documentation for BASE option in LIBNAME statement

Sajid01 — Mon, 07 Jun 2021 14:17:42 GMT

Hello
These may help

https://documentation.sas.com/doc/en/bicdc/9.4/bidsag/titlepage.htm

https://documentation.sas.com/doc/en/bicdc/9.4/bidsag/n0dyqm6uiptmx0n10c1wuuiavuqh.htm

https://documentation.sas.com/doc/en/bicdc/9.4/bidsag/n0l9lj112qvz7tn0z2rzmqui1du0.htm

Re: Documentation for BASE option in LIBNAME statement

FreelanceReinh — Mon, 07 Jun 2021 14:47:29 GMT

Hello @Paul_de_Barros,

The "BASE" engine (as an alias of the V9 engine in SAS 9.x) is mentioned in the SAS Companion for Windows (and also in the SAS Companion for UNIX).

Under LIBNAME Statement: Windows it says:

engine-name

is one of the following library engines supported under Windows:

V9 accesses SAS 9, SAS 9.1, SAS 9.2, SAS 9.3, and SAS 9.4 data sets. You can use the nickname BASE for this engine.

Re: Documentation for BASE option in LIBNAME statement

Tom — Mon, 07 Jun 2021 15:34:00 GMT

The BASE engine just means use the default engine for the version of SAS you are currently running. In general it is not needed, but you might need it if you are pointing at a directory that includes SAS datasets using different engines (currently really only V6 and V7/V8/V9). This is because SAS if you don't specify the engine then SAS will look at the file extensions on the files in the directory. If it only sees files that using the extension used by V6 (like .ssd01 or .ssd) then it will default to using that engine.

For example if you wanted to convert all of the V6 files in a directory into modern dataset structures you could code like this:

libname old v6 '/mypath';
libname new base '/mypath';
proc copy inlib=old outlib=new;
run;

Re: Documentation for BASE option in LIBNAME statement

Sajid01 — Mon, 07 Jun 2021 15:36:04 GMT

Hello @Paul_de_Barros
This page has the details of BASE libname engine
https://documentation.sas.com/doc/en/pgmsascdc/9.4_3.5/lrcon/p052e5a7x9rhl8n1y1y7e82jfe0z.htm