topic Re: Can you stack commands in an 'x' statement in Windows? in SAS Programming

Can you stack commands in an 'x' statement in Windows?

BenConner — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 19:59:50 GMT

Hi,

I would like to be able to do something like this:

x 'p:^cd \sites\^spacechk.bat >c:\sites.txt';

Assuming the ^ character is a command separator. Not sure if it is possible in Windows, much less easy. Anyone done this before?

--Ben

Re: Can you stack commands in an 'x' statement in Windows?

Reeza — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 20:13:33 GMT

You separate commands by & or &&, but each command has to correct.

Test it on your OS first and then use it in SAS.

Re: Can you stack commands in an 'x' statement in Windows?

BenConner — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 20:34:52 GMT

Oh, now that's slick. Worked perfectly.

Thanks!!

--Ben

Re: Can you stack commands in an 'x' statement in Windows?

BenConner — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 21:12:41 GMT

On a related note, is there a way to mask an embedded blank in an argument to a batch file? By default it will throw off the count of the # of arguments...

Thanks!

--Ben

Re: Can you stack commands in an 'x' statement in Windows?

Reeza — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 21:18:17 GMT

Usually you use quotation marks? You can embded single quotes within double quotes or double quotes within single quotes as necessary.

Re: Can you stack commands in an 'x' statement in Windows?

BenConner — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 21:40:40 GMT

Doesn't seem to work in passing arguments in a .bat file. Will Google it and see what I can find.

Thanks!

--Ben

Re: Can you stack commands in an 'x' statement in Windows?

ballardw — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 22:14:41 GMT

You may have to show the content of the batch file.

Re: Can you stack commands in an 'x' statement in Windows?

BenConner — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 22:40:50 GMT

That's certainly not a problem. I called it runsas.bat:

echo Initiating run for %3.sas
echo 1=%~1
echo 2=%~2
echo 3=%~3
pause
%1
cd %2
copy lock %3.lck
"C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.4\sas.exe" -sysin "%3.sas" -memsize max
del %3.lck

The first 4 lines are for debugging and will go away. The object was to run it from SAS with the X command. Argument 1 is the drive letter; argument 2 is the path to the SAS program to be run; argument 3 is the name of the SAS source file w/o a suffix.

The file 'lock' is a single character file used as a blocking semaphore. Or will be when I get this working.

Since the path can have embedded spaces in it, this has been causing me grief trying to get it right.

--Ben

Re: Can you stack commands in an 'x' statement in Windows?

BenConner — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 15:14:47 GMT

While I wasn't able to find a solution to the original question, I found a way to get (mostly) the same thing done:

x " ""C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.4\sas.exe"" -sysin ""&runpath\test1.sas"" -log ""&runpath\test1.log"" ";

also works nicely for kicking off an external SAS run. Coupling it with noxwait and noxsync then allows a controlling SAS sheduler to spawn off different SAS runs at will without getting held up waiting for each to complete. This was the final goal.

Thanks!

--Ben