Change temporary work location within code

[jerry898969]

Hello,

Is it possible to redirect my work folder to a different location while in sas using sas statements?  I'm using sas 9.3.

I tried

options work="c:\temp";

That returns this warning

WARNING 11-12: SAS option WORK is valid only at startup of the SAS System or startup of a SAS process. The SAS option is ignored.

I will need to run this on a linux server using SAS/Connect.  I'm doing a proc ginside with census block data that has over 600 million rows so for this one process I want to redirect the temp space.

Thank you

[Tom]

How are you making the SAS/Connect session?  If you are using one of the SAS provided scripts then you can modify the command used to launch SAS on the remote machine to include -work option.

But if you are just worried about WORK datasets then just create permanent data sets instead.

[jerry898969]

Hi Tom,

I'm connecting using the signon statement.

When proc giniside runs it creates a temp table that is very large.  I want it to put that in a location where I have enough space for it to get as big as it needs.

Thank you

[Tom]

I suspect that you want to change the UTILLOC option and not the WORK option.  As I said before you can control where the datasets are made by changing the name you use for them.  But the placement of intermediate files that a proc might create are controlled by the UTILLOC option.

If you are using a script with the SIGNON command then you can modify the script.  For example the default script for connecting via TCP to a Unix host includes this line.

   type 'sas -dmr -comamid tcp -noterminal ';

You can just make a modified version and use it in the SIGNON.

If you are using the SASCMD= option on the SIGNON then perhaps you can modify that command to include the UTILLOC option.

But if you are connecting to some SAS spawner then I think you would need to make changes there, which would be harder to do by a single user.  Perhaps the admin can create a separate service that you can connect to for these types of jobs?

[jerry898969 · Accepted solution]

Thank you both for your replies.  I was able to figure it out using a Linux application that allowed me to use this command

$ sas -work /home/data/temp temp.sas

My task was to find a way to do it in sas then the lead told me to use this approach.

Thank you both for your help

[Astounding]

jerry,

You have certain complications here ... the SAS/Connect situation, and working storage as a procedure executes rather than storing a one-level data set name.  So you will need to test this to see if it actually works for you.

The general idea is that you set up a library yourself:

libname mystuff 'path to folder';

At any point in the program, you can specify:

options user=mystuff;

Automatically from that point forward, all single-level data set names get stored in MYSTUFF, instead of in WORK.  Later on, you can restore the original conditions:

options user=WORK;

The MYSTUFF folder will not get cleaned out automatically at the end of your program ...  you will need to manage that yourself.

Good luck.