Do you use the SAS syntax index?

[Keith73]

Hello SAS procedure users. We in SAS Publications are trying to gather some information about how you use our documentation.  We’d really appreciate your help, and hope you’ll take a couple of minutes to answer these questions.

• Are you aware of the syntax index that is located at support.sas.com/documentation/?

• Do you use the syntax index?

• Do you find it helpful?

• Would it help you if we added the options for the procedure statements to the syntax index?

Thanks for your feedback. We’re always looking for ways to improve the documentation for you.

Keith

[ballardw · Accepted solution]

• Are you aware of the syntax index that is located at support.sas.com/documentation/? - Yes

• Do you use the syntax index? No

• Do you find it helpful? Not much but when I am looking for syntax I often have an idea where it is and look in the locally installed online help. When I am looking for something that may not be locally installed then I tend to use the Help>SAS on the Web>Technical support menu from Base SAS to get to the documentation. I am not a beginning user so that is likely to influence my choices of how and where (as well as what I may be looking for) I search for additional information.

• Would it help you if we added the options for the procedure statements to the syntax index? My personal opinion is that any SAS keyword should bring up something. Example searching for RELRISK (from proc freq) in the index yields no results. When I go the the Technical Support as above I get 173 results. If I have to enter Tables where Relrisk resides there are about 500 results, most of which have nothing to do with what I was specifically wanting to find. Yes the result can be refined but a different starting point gets be closer on the first shot.

[PGStats]

I refer to the support.sas.com/documentation pages only when I need to give someone a universally accessible reference to SAS documentation. For my own coding needs I consult the help documents residing on my machine. Ideally, full context-sensitive syntax documentation should be available in every SAS code editor. Having a syntax engine on support.sas.com/documentation is just too little, too late.

[mohamed_zaki]

• Are you aware of the syntax index that is located at support.sas.com/documentation/?

 No

• Do you use the syntax index?

 No

• Do you find it helpful?

....

• Would it help you if we added the options for the procedure statements to the syntax index?

Yes ... I think.

[MichelleHomes]

Hi @Keith73,

Thanks for reaching out to the community with your questions. My response:

• Are you aware of the syntax index that is located at support.sas.com/documentation/? Yes

• Do you use the syntax index? Rarely. I tend to use the SAS Procedures by Name and Product feature the most when looking for PROC syntax or the statement/function/format syntax from the specific Base SAS manual at http://support.sas.com/documentation/onlinedoc/base/index.html

• Do you find it helpful? Occasionally as described above

• Would it help you if we added the options for the procedure statements to the syntax index? Yes!

Thanks,

Michelle

[SteveDenham]

Count me in as operating like @PGStats.  I know it is there, and if I am pointing out something I can use it, but for my own use, I use my locally installed help utility.

Steve Denham

[Reeza]

I google SAS + version + terms. Usually get what I want on first hit.

Since we have a secure lab - no internet access the set up of the built in documentation is very important to us.

[Keith73]

Thanks to everyone for their feedback!  I truly appreciate your taking the time to post your responses.

Keith