Searching the permanent storage location for formats

chouchou — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 15:45:17 GMT

Given the following OPTIONS statement:

libname A 'SAS library reference';

libname F 'SAS library reference';

options fmtsearch = (A F.X);

What is the second location searched for formats?

A.F.X

B.A.FORMATS

C.WORK.FORMATS

D.SAS supplied formats

The answer is C.

However I feel it should be Library.formats which doesn't appear as answers at all.

What do you guys feel about?Can anyone explain it to me? Thank you so much!Usingocati

Re: Searching the permanent storage location for formats

Astounding — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 17:51:04 GMT

According to the documentation, you are correct. I might let SAS off on a technicality, however.

Note that when you create a format, you are not permitted to use a name that SAS has already defined in its list of existing formats. For example, this program would fail because monyy is not permitted as a name:

proc format;

value monyy 1='Hey';

run;

So when SAS searches for a format, it first looks to see if the format is on the list of SAS-Institute-supplied formats. Then it follows the FMTSEARCH rules which in this case would begin with WORK.FORMATS.

At best, the question is not clear in what it asks for.

topic Searching the permanent storage location for formats in SAS Programming

Searching the permanent storage location for formats

Re: Searching the permanent storage location for formats