topic Re: How to Sleep/Rest during loops AND FREE all the resouce[not freeze the panel]? in SAS Programming

How to Sleep/Rest during loops AND FREE all the resouce[not freeze the panel]?

hellohere — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 01:36:44 GMT

Running loops which take hours to finish. The window/panel is freezed, which is not big deal.

But like to check out some datasets in between to fathom any possible scenario.

How to do? Just sleep(3*60*1000) alike is fine?!

Re: How to Sleep/Rest during loops AND FREE all the resouce[not freeze the panel]?

quickbluefish — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 03:38:25 GMT

If you are trapped in a GUI, you need to either submit the job in batch mode (ideally) or possibly open up another instance of whatever you’re using and do your other work there. If you’re submitting the job through a terminal, you just need to run it in the background - the reason your screen is frozen is because it’s running in the foreground.

Re: How to Sleep/Rest during loops AND FREE all the resouce[not freeze the panel]?

hellohere — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 07:20:09 GMT

How to submit the job in batch mode/Windows PC?

Say my code is LoopIt.sas

Re: How to Sleep/Rest during loops AND FREE all the resouce[not freeze the panel]?

Ksharp — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 08:32:02 GMT

"D:\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.4\sas.exe" -sysin "c:\temp\temp.sas" -log "c:\temp\temp.log"

Re: How to Sleep/Rest during loops AND FREE all the resouce[not freeze the panel]?

hellohere — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 15:12:15 GMT

under DOS prompt?!

Re: How to Sleep/Rest during loops AND FREE all the resouce[not freeze the panel]?

quickbluefish — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 16:01:47 GMT

If you're on Windows, yes. Obviously, adjust the paths as needed for both the sas.exe file and your program. Are you using SAS EG? Studio? Something else?

Also, are you simply trying to do other work in SAS while your program is running, or are you actually trying to look at the files being generated by this loop while the program is running? If you're trying to look at the files being generated by the loop while the program is running, and those files are temporary (i.e., in WORK), you will have to figure out where WORK is located on your file system and then proceed with caution in actually opening those files. Don't try to open anything that has an extension like ".lck"

Re: How to Sleep/Rest during loops AND FREE all the resouce[not freeze the panel]?

ballardw — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 17:24:19 GMT

Something you might consider would be sharing an example of your code and/or describe what you program is doing in some detail. Often people less familiar with SAS will try to force an approach to some tasks that better done using other procedures in SAS.

Also "loops" and "files" in the same phrase could mean that you are doing a lot of disk IO that may not exactly be needed with a different approach.

Re: How to Sleep/Rest during loops AND FREE all the resouce[not freeze the panel]?

andreas_lds — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 07:02:26 GMT

Please post the code "taking hours to finish". Recent versions of SAS Enterprise Guide don't freeze while executing code, which client do you use?

Re: How to Sleep/Rest during loops AND FREE all the resouce[not freeze the panel]?

hellohere — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 07:24:46 GMT

The original codes takes lots of datasets at WORK directory.

I bet need additional codes to re-generate those datasets, if to run at batch mode, right?!

Re: How to Sleep/Rest during loops AND FREE all the resouce[not freeze the panel]?

hellohere — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 07:26:15 GMT

too many sas code files. Sometime even myself losts track of what each part does. THanks, though.

Re: How to Sleep/Rest during loops AND FREE all the resouce[not freeze the panel]?

hellohere — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 07:30:01 GMT

I am using PC SAS. The code files invoke lots of PROC SGPLOT, thousands if exactly.

THe panel keeps freezed even hours after the code files all finish sucessfully [the output pic files have info on filenames to tell].

Re: How to Sleep/Rest during loops AND FREE all the resouce[not freeze the panel]?

Kurt_Bremser — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 09:08:02 GMT

@hellohere wrote:

I am using PC SAS.

Display Manager or Enterprise Guide as interface?

Re: How to Sleep/Rest during loops AND FREE all the resouce[not freeze the panel]?

hellohere — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 11:37:08 GMT

just regular SAS foundation？！

Re: How to Sleep/Rest during loops AND FREE all the resouce[not freeze the panel]?

hellohere — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 13:10:39 GMT

Thanks erveryone. I do ran it at BATCH mode now, though still alot to catch up.

Any SAS PDF/DOC on btach mode, specially for any possible pitfalls?!

Re: How to Sleep/Rest during loops AND FREE all the resouce[not freeze the panel]?

SASKiwi — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 20:53:31 GMT

You will find answers to most of your questions in the SAS docs: https://go.documentation.sas.com/doc/en/pgmsascdc/9.4_3.5/hostwin/p16esisc4nrd5sn1ps5l6u8f79k6.htm

Re: How to Sleep/Rest during loops AND FREE all the resouce[not freeze the panel]?

hellohere — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 02:40:30 GMT

Thanks,

My PC is set to sleep after 3hr. The BATCH mode does not finish [need roughly 5 hours].

When the screen was re-active, the BATCH mode came back, BUT complained fatcl I/O error[nothing is done/changed] and crushed.

Not sure why.

Re: How to Sleep/Rest during loops AND FREE all the resouce[not freeze the panel]?

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 06:24:41 GMT

You must turn your "energy saving" settings off when you need to run long batch jobs in the background, because the system might turn off resources (like disks) when no user interaction from mouse or keyboard is detected.