topic Re: Data null Question in SAS Programming

Data null Question

geronimo44 — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 15:03:29 GMT

Hi community, I have come through some kind of excercises and I would much appreciate your ideas. I have also done my research in SAS documentation but I still have some questions on the following:

What would this code do and what results could possibly return?

data _null_;

x = sleep(2);

run;

Thank you

Re: Data null Question

LinusH — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 15:22:11 GMT

Search support.sas.com for data _null_. It should give you plenty of hits.

And secondly, you have a piece of code. Please don't ask what it does - try it yourself and observe...

Re: Data null Question

PaigeMiller — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 15:33:18 GMT

Also, the HELP documentation for the SLEEP command is extremely clear.

Re: Data null Question

geronimo44 — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 15:42:25 GMT

Thanks for the replies. Apparently I am not able to run the code cause my academic license expired and that's why I threw it in the community board. I also am aware of the Sleep functionality but since I am unable to run the code, I can't see how teh data_null connects to the sleep function.

In any case thank you for your consideration.

Re: Data null Question

Reeza — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 15:44:10 GMT

data _null_ tells SAS not to create a data set while executing this particular data step. There is no specific connection to the sleep function. You use a Data _null_ statement in this situation to pass commands to the system that you only want to execute once.

Sleep tells it to pause between commands, usually as a safety precaution to wait for another process to finish.