topic Re: Permanently Change WORK folder location in SAS Enterprise Guide

Permanently Change WORK folder location

wzimmerman — Wed, 06 Jul 2016 21:49:48 GMT

Hello,

Is there a way to permanently change the WORK location from my C drive temp folder to another folder say on a shared drive? Or a different hard drive?

Cheers,

Re: Permanently Change WORK folder location

ballardw — Wed, 06 Jul 2016 22:24:09 GMT

What is the reason for wanting a different location for the work library? T

Re: Permanently Change WORK folder location

wzimmerman — Wed, 06 Jul 2016 22:27:21 GMT

I am dealing with large data and the temporary files are eating up my HHD space to the point that I run out of space in some instances.

So my choices are (1) Buy a bigger HDD. (2) Change the WORK folder to a network that has the space. (3) Buy a server version of SAS which is very expensive.

Option 2 seems the easiest and cheapest by far if doable.

Re: Permanently Change WORK folder location

ballardw — Wed, 06 Jul 2016 22:36:20 GMT

If you have access to a network drive then create a permanent library there and just remember to use the LIBRARY.DATASET notation in code or point to the library as needed. If you can map a drive letter (Windoze) to the network location then creating the library is easy after mapping the drive letter:

libname mylib "X:\"; for example.

Just make sure that the drive and the library are available to your projects.

Note that network drives may have performance issues depending on traffic.

Re: Permanently Change WORK folder location

Ksharp — Thu, 07 Jul 2016 00:43:29 GMT

Before run you code , add this line .

Or you could add this line in AUTOEXEC file .

options user='d:\temp\';

Re: Permanently Change WORK folder location

Reeza — Thu, 07 Jul 2016 02:32:52 GMT

Note that you'll be giving up significant speed if you start working off of a network drive versus your local HD. Especially if the files are big, you are effectively reading and writing a large amount of data across your network.

Rather than a permanent setting, I would recommend using the user library option that @ksharp has recommended.

If you set up a library with the name user, SAS treats that as the WORK library instead of work, and you don't need to use a two level (libname.dataset) naming system.