reading compressed sas files

[JohnK]

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.

J.

[art297]

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

[Doc_Duke]

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

[art297]

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.