topic Re: Wrong command in SAS Programming

Wrong command

HeatherNewton — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 04:00:46 GMT

X”mv &G_IFC_STG_PATH./map671.sas7bdat &G_IFC_STG_PATH./map671.sas7bdat”;

Is this command valid? Not renaming or moving to another directory...

japelin — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 05:12:07 GMT

First, run "options mprint symbolgen;" to get the command string that resolve the macro variable and check if it executes correctly as a command.

Note that the command presented will not be moved or renamed since the first and second parameters are the same file path.

Kurt_Bremser — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 06:48:57 GMT

Source and target of the move command are identical, so this will in effect do nothing.

Anyway, don't use the X statement if you want to know what an external command does, use a PIPE:

data _null_;
infile pipe "mv source target 2>&1";
input;
put _infile_;
run;

The 2>&1 reroutes stderr to stdout, so the data step can read all messages originating from the external comnand and write them to the SAS log.