topic reading compressed sas files in SAS Procedures

reading compressed sas files

JohnK — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:04:18 GMT

Dear Friends,

I have a sas datafile like myfile.sas7bdat.gz. I am trying to extract some variables from this huge dataset under Windows on a PC.

Is it possible to read this file without uncompressing the whole file by using 7zip?

What about winzip?

Thanks for any help.

reading compressed sas files

art297 — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:05:34 GMT

John, Take a look at: http://communities.sas.com/message/11417#11417

reading compressed sas files

Doc_Duke — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:29:06 GMT

This time Art's reference won't work. Pipe works for text files, but not for direct access (.sas7bdat) files.

I'm afraid that you will have to unzip the file first to use it.

I will note that a SAS dataset that is compressed with NTFS (Windows compression) takes about the same about of space as one that is compressed with gzip, so your net disk space usage (after decompression) may be the same. You will need double space to do the decompression itself.

Doc

reading compressed sas files

art297 — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:56:49 GMT

Doc, Agreed! The link I suggested wouldn't be applicable in this case. However, the upzipping can still be incorporated in the code. e.g.: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.soft-sys.sas/msg/f4c036b92ad17817 . However, I don't know of a way to accomplish the task without unzipping the entire file.