Copying and renaming a file

[JamesNewcombe]

Hello

I'm having great difficulty achieving something that I'm sure shouldn't be a problem. All I want to do is get SAS to copy a file (not a SAS dataset) to a new name in the same directory. The new name contains the current year/month yyyy-mm and  this is stored in a macro variable.

I've tried "x call copy" but dos keeps stopping to prompt me to tell it if it's a file or directory I'm copying, which is no good at 1am when the program will run. I read you can pass parameter /i to turn this off, but it doesn't seem to work. 

I've also tried x calling a batch file and passing the year/month as a parameter, but I can't get this to work either.

Does any know how I achieve this?

[Patrick · Accepted solution]

Hi

I believe what you're missing is "option noxwait;'

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/hostwin/63285/HTML/default/viewer.htm#exittemp.htm

Below code works for me.

options noxwait;
%let date=20111220;
data _null_;
/*  x "copy c:\temp\testdata.txt c:\temp\testdata_&date..txt";*/
  rc= system("copy c:\temp\testdata.txt c:\temp\testdata_&date..txt");
  put rc=;
run;

Using "system" instead of 'x' allows you to store a return code (zero if successful) and do some extra stuff based on the return code.

HTH

Patrick

[JamesNewcombe]

Thanks Patrick, I knew there had to be an easy answer!

[JamesNewcombe]

Ah...

I still have one problem. The directory path to the file I want to copy has spaces in it. Normally in DOS you'd just put quotes around the path, but the string in the system command is already in quotes.

Is there a way around this, apart from renaming the path?

Thanks.

[Tom]

Use the QUOTE function.  This will put quotes around the string and also double any existing quotes so that they get based through to the OS properly.

data _null_;
   oldname = 'This file has spaces.txt';
   newname = 'This_file_doesnot.txt';
   rc= system(quote(catx(' ','copy',quote(trim(oldname)),quote(trim(newname)))));
  put rc=;
run;

Or if you want to do with macro statements.

%let oldname = "This file has spaces.txt";
%let newmame = This_file_doesnot.txt ;
%sysexec(%sysfunc(quote(copy &oldname &newname)));

[XMonsterX]

Hi, I know this is an old post, there are a few other possibilities for copying an external file to a seperate location. I'm not sure what the prompt is for the copy, as I don't run into that issue, and perhaps it's because I have a different version (9.4) but I noticed that the original X Copy wasn't correct. 

In an X Copy, the X and copy are outside the quotes, and the file you want to copy and where/what the new name will be need to be in their own seperate quotes.

X COPY "&PATH_DM.\Trial_logs.sas7bdat" "&PATH_DM.\Trail_logs_&TODATE..sas7bdat";

Another option (Which I personally like much better) is the systask command option. This means of copying has many more controls than RC or a typical X Copy. You have the option to Taskname, waitfor, status, ect. 

SYSTASK COMMAND "COPY &PATH_DM.\Trail_logs.sas7bdat &PATH_DM.\Trail_logs_&TODATE..sas7bdat" WAIT MNAME=GDDINCOPY TASKNAME=GDDINCOPY STATUS=TASK; WAITFOR GDDINCOPY; 

There are other options, though IMO I think these 2 do it all. 

Happy Coding.

Monster