topic Re: Is it possible to read a SCL catalog entry without sas/af licence? in SAS Programming

Is it possible to read a SCL catalog entry without sas/af licence?

bitcruncher — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 23:18:27 GMT

Doing a migrate process and found some SCL written in 1997. We discontinued SAS/AF years ago and need to know what is in the catalog so we can rewrite and migrate without it being SCL.

Any ideas how I can read the SCL entry without SAS/AF? (years since I used AF, are SCL entries even readable??)

Re: Is it possible to read a SCL catalog entry without sas/af licence?

SASKiwi — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 23:41:55 GMT

You could try the CATALOG access method in the FILENAME statement: https://go.documentation.sas.com/doc/en/pgmsascdc/9.4_3.5/lestmtsglobal/n0e720f80cp61wn1mplyz2xy2aeu.htm

Then use the INCLUDE fileref command in the SAS Windowing Environment.

I assume you have been able to report on entries within a catalog, perhaps using PROC CATALOG. If this doesn't work then FILENAME is unlikely to work.

Re: Is it possible to read a SCL catalog entry without sas/af licence?

Tom — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 01:35:50 GMT

Probably only the SOURCE entries.

Also if it is really from 28 years ago you might need to have access to an old version of SAS to read it. Catalog files are not cross version compatible like V7 SAS datasets are.

Re: Is it possible to read a SCL catalog entry without sas/af licence?

bitcruncher — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 04:41:53 GMT

Arrgh .. thanks for that

Re: Is it possible to read a SCL catalog entry without sas/af licence?

bitcruncher — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 04:53:22 GMT

Yup, that worked. All I needed was this

libname scllib 'PRODD.D29801.PROD.SCLLIB' disp=shr ;

filename fileref1 catalog 'scllib.aftools.csv.scl' ;

data _null_ ;
infile fileref1 ;
input ;
put _infile_ ;
run ;

and out popped every line of code in the SCL entry.

Thanks for that, much appreciated. Must be the first time in over 30 years I've touched anything SCLish or CATALOGish!

Re: Is it possible to read a SCL catalog entry without sas/af licence?

SASKiwi — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 19:01:06 GMT

@bitcruncher - Wow catalogs on zOS! Pretty amazing you can still read these after all that time!