topic Re: Running R in SAS in SAS Programming

Running R in SAS

cminard — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 13:41:35 GMT

I am trying to run R script within SAS.

Windows 10, x64 environment

R version 4.5.1
SAS version 9.4M8

I have followed examples previously published including:

https://pharmasug.org/proceedings/2019/ST/PharmaSUG-2019-ST-149.pdf

https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Programming/How-to-Run-R-code-inside-SAS-easily/td-p/210116

It appears to be set up correctly

1    proc options option=rlang;
2    run;

    SAS (r) Proprietary Software Release 9.4  TS1M8

 RLANG             Enables SAS to execute R language statements.
NOTE: PROCEDURE OPTIONS used (Total process time):
      real time           0.01 seconds
      cpu time            0.01 seconds

However, when I attempt to run R script, I get an error message regarding the R package 'stats'.

4    proc iml;
NOTE: Writing HTML Body file: sashtml.htm
NOTE: IML Ready
5        submit / R;
6        endsubmit;
WARNING: R: During startup - Warning message:
WARNING: R: package 'stats' in options("defaultPackages") was not found
ERROR: R: Error in is.ts(a) : could not find function "is.ts"
ERROR: SAS is unable to transcode character data to the R encoding.

 statement : SUBMIT at line 5 column 5
7    quit;
NOTE: Exiting IML.
NOTE: The SAS System stopped processing this step because of errors.
NOTE: PROCEDURE IML used (Total process time):
      real time           2.56 seconds
      cpu time            0.75 seconds

The 'stats' package appears to be installed and runs fine within RStudio. The is.ts function seems to be associated with time series analysis, although that really has nothing to do with the SAS PROC IML script above.

Any thoughts or suggestions on resolving this error would be appreciated. Thank you.

Re: Running R in SAS

yabwon — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 15:36:57 GMT

What is your SAS session encoding?

Looks like it may be different than R's.

Bart

Re: Running R in SAS

cminard — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 15:47:23 GMT

I'm not familiar with SAS "encoding".

10   proc options option=encoding;
11   run;

    SAS (r) Proprietary Software Release 9.4  TS1M8

 ENCODING=WLATIN1  Specifies the default character-set encoding for the SAS session.
NOTE: PROCEDURE OPTIONS used (Total process time):
      real time           0.00 seconds
      cpu time            0.00 seconds

Re: Running R in SAS

yabwon — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 15:48:44 GMT

also R_HOME may help:

proc options option=RLANG;
run;
options set=R_HOME="/path/to/R/R-4.3.1/";
PROC IML;
  submit / R;
  endsubmit;
QUIT;

this hot-fix helped me too:

https://support.sas.com/kb/70/253.html

Bart

Re: Running R in SAS

yabwon — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 15:50:02 GMT

try to run SAS in UTF-8, it's called "SAS (Unicode Support)"

Re: Running R in SAS

cminard — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 18:52:43 GMT

Thank you for the suggestions. Unfortunately, I still get the same error messages.

9    proc options option=encoding; run;

    SAS (r) Proprietary Software Release 9.4  TS1M8

 ENCODING=UTF-8    Specifies the default character-set encoding for the SAS session.
NOTE: PROCEDURE OPTIONS used (Total process time):
      real time           0.01 seconds
      cpu time            0.01 seconds


10   proc options option=rlang; run;

    SAS (r) Proprietary Software Release 9.4  TS1M8

 RLANG             Enables SAS to execute R language statements.
NOTE: PROCEDURE OPTIONS used (Total process time):
      real time           0.00 seconds
      cpu time            0.01 seconds


11
12   proc iml;
NOTE: IML Ready
13       submit / R;
14       endsubmit;
WARNING: R: During startup - Warning message:
WARNING: R: package 'stats' in options("defaultPackages") was not found
ERROR: R: Error in is.ts(a) : could not find function "is.ts"
ERROR: SAS is unable to transcode character data to the R encoding.

 statement : SUBMIT at line 13 column 5
15   quit;
NOTE: Exiting IML.
NOTE: The SAS System stopped processing this step because of errors.
NOTE: PROCEDURE IML used (Total process time):
      real time           0.54 seconds
      cpu time            0.03 seconds

The R_HOME path is already set in the config file. I did try running the options statement that you suggested anyway, but that did not resolve the issue either.

I will continue browsing the hot-fixes.

Re: Running R in SAS

Ksharp — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 07:16:39 GMT

Calling @Rick_SAS
https://blogs.sas.com/content/iml/2023/01/09/install-r-sas-viya.html

Re: Running R in SAS

Rick_SAS — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 15:22:42 GMT

We saw this issue in 2024, but I was not involved in investigating the problem. Perhaps @SAS_Rob has information about the cause or resolution.

Re: Running R in SAS

SAS_Rob — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 16:07:15 GMT

It seems to be related to something amiss in the R installation. Will you try reinstalling R and seeing if that helps? If it does not fix the problem, then please open a support request with Technical Support.

Submit a Support Request | SAS Support

Re: Running R in SAS

cminard — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 18:00:39 GMT

Uninstalled R and RStudio. Downloaded and reinstalled. There is a newer version of R (4.5.2) which I installed. Updated config but still get the same error in SAS. Weighing whether or not to reinstall SAS. There is a new version of SAS (9.4M9), but not sure that would make a difference.

Technically, it does not appear that SAS officially supports R version 4.5.2 (or 4.5.1) yet.

https://blogs.sas.com/content/iml/2013/09/16/what-versions-of-r-are-supported-by-sas.html

Re: Running R in SAS

yabwon — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 18:55:30 GMT

They do work together:

Bart