topic Re: Why are libref and fileref limited to 8 characters? in SAS Programming

Why are libref and fileref limited to 8 characters?

MarioS_ — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 06:06:05 GMT

Hi there,

can anybody explain to me in simple words why libref and fileref are limited to 8 characters?

What is the reason why we can't use .. I don't know .. 32 characters?

Thanks in advance.

Re: Why are libref and fileref limited to 8 characters?

LinusH — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 06:19:06 GMT

I think that this question is best directed to the SAS development team.
I think that one obstacle towards longer librefs is z/os naming restictions.

Re: Why are libref and fileref limited to 8 characters?

Reeza — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 06:21:36 GMT

Legacy restrictions.

8 chars is one byte so that may have something to do with it.

Re: Why are libref and fileref limited to 8 characters?

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 06:33:44 GMT

SAS was developed on IBM mainframes, and so SAS object names resemble typical OS/360 / MVS / z/OS file names, and those have a restriction that every level can have a maximum of 8 characters (so the names look like PROD.SOURCE.CNTL, but PROD.JOBSOURCE.CNTL is impossible), this is a legacy restriction coming from the early development of SAS.

It depends on the internal quality of the code repository if changing the underlying type from 8 to 32 characters will break something or not.

OTOH, I've never felt the need for more characters in file/librefs. And as a longtime programmer (and UNIX at that), I hate unnecessary typing. So 8 character libnames and 32 character dataset names is enough for me.