How to check if a folder is empty

[Arjumand]

Hi,

I need the code to check whether the directory is empty in sas macro.

[RW9]

Please note this is a Q&A board, not a contract work request system.  If you have a question, provide what you have done, show example code using the {i}.  If you have access to the command line then doing a filename tmp pipe 'dir c:\test /b'; and using that in a datastep then checking that might work.  Not sure what the benefit of checking for an empty directory is though, doesn't really add anything.  Do you want to check existence of the folder, or maybe a file you don't want to overwrite?

[Arjumand]

Hi @RW9: Thanks for your reply. Just for the info, I am not actually doing any project but making myself more familiar with macro programming. I was actually writing a UNIX shell script which had certain validations and thought for the same in SAS.

[ChrisBrooks · Accepted solution]

This should work

%macro isemptyfolder(folder);

	%let filrf=mydir;
	%let rc=%sysfunc(filename(filrf, "&folder"));
	%let did=%sysfunc(dopen(&filrf));
	%let memcount=%sysfunc(dnum(&did));
	%let rc=%sysfunc(dclose(&did));
	%put 'number of members in folder ' &folder ' = ' &memcount;

%mend isemptyfolder;