topic Re: SAS in Unix: X Command in SAS Programming

SAS in Unix: X Command

krueg314 — Mon, 15 Aug 2016 18:17:55 GMT

I was able to succesfully count the number of files in the New Folder in unix shell and output it to My SAS files folder

cd H:\My_SAS_Files\New_Folder

count='ls | wc -w'

{ echo -n 'Number of Files is ' & eval "$count"; } >> H:\My_SAS_Files\output

To Check Number of Files:

cd ..

tail output

I need to execute this in SAS to encoperate a loop and some macros, but I'm not sure how to get the X comamnd to work. Any ideas?

X "cd H:\My_SAS_Files\New_Folder";
X "count='ls | wc -w'";
X "{ echo -n 'Number of Files is ' & eval "$count"; } >> H:\My_SAS_Files\output";

Tom — Mon, 15 Aug 2016 18:45:18 GMT

Unix is not going to be able to find any files on a directory name that starts with H:.

I find is is easier to code using a DATA _NULL_ and the PIPE engine.

%let path=/mydirectory ;

data file_count;
  infile "cd &path ; ls -A | wc -l" pipe;
  path="&path";
  input files;
run;

Ksharp — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 01:49:27 GMT

Make a Shell file  xx.sh and put all the command into it ,execute it at SAS side:

X '/home/xx.sh' ;

LinusH — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 07:52:43 GMT

Another option would be to use SAS external file functions.

May require some more programming lines the the shell counterpart, but you'll keep all logic in SAS.

Yet another option is to first call your shell script, then call SAS with your SAS program, avoiding the OS call from within SAS.