Are these an unacceptable solutions to a SAS problem?

rogerjdeangelis — Sat, 09 Jul 2016 15:23:14 GMT

Are these an unacceptable solutions to a SAS problem?

Seems to a lot of controversy about the relation between R and SAS.

A user wanted to convert excel to a csv

proc iml;
    submit / R;
    library(rio)
    convert('d:xls/xls_sample.xlsx','d:xls/xls_sample.csv')
endsubmit;
quit;

or

%utl_submit_r64(
   library(rio);
   convert('d:xls/xls_sample.xlsx','d:xls/xls_sample.csv');
);

Re: Are these an unacceptable solutions to a SAS problem?

ChrisHemedinger — Sat, 09 Jul 2016 15:47:18 GMT

Hi @rogerjdeangelis,

I think people appreciate knowing about all options. Using SAS to call R functions for utilities like this can be handy for your toolbox, but most SAS users don't have R configured within their SAS environments. So when providing an answer in these forums, the suggestion to use SAS' integration methods with R is academic -- most people can't apply those techniques in their workplace. So a pure SAS answer is usually preferred, and is still the most relevant/helpful response that you can provide.

For this particular example, SAS has import/export utilities that can do similar work if you have SAS/ACCESS to PC Files (to read the Excel files). And if you don't have SAS/ACCESS but do have ability to call OS commands (required by R integration methods), then you can achieve the same by using VB Script or PowerShell or Python without needing a specialized R environment.

For people who do have R on their SAS environment, the main benefit is the ability to reuse R packages to experiment with methods that others have contributed to the R community, or perhaps to reuse work created by colleagues who use R primarily. See this demo and discussion from Rick:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmRQ3MtkG6A

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Are these an unacceptable solutions to a SAS problem?

Re: Are these an unacceptable solutions to a SAS problem?