topic Re: Bufsize for long concatination in SAS Programming

Bufsize for long concatination

J111 — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 05:41:47 GMT

Hello,

We would like to use CATX for concatenation of 30 words, each word has about 32 characters.

The input SAS file matrix has col1, col2 until col30 variables. The log mentions an issue with buffersize.

code:
options bufsize=MAX ;

data _null_ ;
set matrix ;
want = catx(", ", of col:) ;
run ;

log:

WARNING: In a call to the CATX function, the buffer allocated for the result was not long enough to contain the concatenation of
all the arguments.

available;

We were able to create the concatination with simple code

want = col1||col2|| until ||col30

However the automation is important and the number of columns may change in the future from 30 to 35.

Appreciate your advice.

Re: Bufsize for long concatination

J111 — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 06:10:47 GMT

This works !

data want;
set matrix ;
length want $32767;
want =catx(", ", of col:) ;
run;

Re: Bufsize for long concatination

ballardw — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 15:28:22 GMT

30 variables of length 32: 30*32 =960 characters plus 29 commas=989 characters. Your length is a tad excessive.

The message you received is because by default the CATX function will use 200 as the default length if the length of the target variable is not set. So you tried to cram about 989 into 200 spaces and get the message.