topic Re: No means output with intermittent fileref _HTMLOUT error in SAS Programming

No means output with intermittent fileref _HTMLOUT error

gwwp — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 16:58:40 GMT

I am a new SAS user using SAS Studio. In the following code I am attempting to find the mean of a column.

PROC IMPORT DATAFILE='/home/u61857737/my_data.csv'
DBMS=CSV
replace
OUT=Assignment1;
GETNAMES=YES;

RUN;

*assign data to dataset dt1;
data dt1;
set work.Assignment1;
run;

*mean of age for participants in study years “1999-2004”, “2005-2010” and “2011-2014” in Table 1;
proc means data=dt1 mean; *no change for work.dt1, Assignment1 or work.Assignment1;
var age;
class r1surveyyear;
run;

On run, there is no output in the results tab and I get the following errors:

ERROR: At least one file associated with fileref _HTMLOUT is still in use.

ERROR: Error in the FILENAME statement.

This error disappears when I highlight and run (sometimes twice)

PROC IMPORT DATAFILE='/home/u61857737/my_data.csv'
DBMS=CSV
replace
OUT=Assignment1;
GETNAMES=YES;

RUN;

and then run the complete code, but there is no table displayed for means and results remain blank.

The statement

PROC CONTENTS DATA=WORK.IMPORT; RUN;

does print out metadata tables.

What am I doing wrong here?

Re: No means output with intermittent fileref _HTMLOUT error

ballardw — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 18:37:40 GMT

One question: why are you running contents on Work.Import when you are creating and using Assignment1 and/or DT1? Those are the two sets that are going to have an impact on the Proc Means execution.

"Still in use" messages can be somewhat tricky. If you open the output with an external program that might lock it from further use by SAS. Or if you are writing to a specific file and don't close it. Or the network is just slow.

Since you don't show a Filename statement then this is likely related to a server setting for output and the server might just be slow to finish an update. Having to repeat running the import step to get a proper execution may be an indicator of high load on the server slowing things down.

Re: No means output with intermittent fileref _HTMLOUT error

gwwp — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 19:10:26 GMT

Thank you for your reply, it's helpful to know that server issues slow SAS down. I don't know what Work.Import is for, and it's not related to the exercise I'm doing, which is why I commented it out. I'm assuming it's unnecessary here?

I will post a separate question regarding how to get a means output.

Re: No means output with intermittent fileref _HTMLOUT error

Reeza — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 19:42:30 GMT

*mean of age for participants in study years “1999-2004”, “2005-2010” and “2011-2014” in Table 1;

This line in your code means you're copying and pasting your code, likely from a Word document. It's adding 'smart quotes' and may also be adding other invisible characters affecting your code.

Try typing the code out from scratch and see if it works.

Also, you can turn off that feature - see the link above.