Anyway to get dataset's row count?!

[hellohere]

Not go through the dataset, or using sql?  Anyway using macro directly by fetching from meta info?! 

[Kurt_Bremser]

Using DICTIONARY.TABLES in PROC SQL does exactly that, it reads the dataset metadata from the dataset header page.

If you need the number for processing outside of SQL, you can use SASHELP.VTABLE, which is a SQL view of DiCTIONARY.TABLES.

[hellohere]

my SASHELP.VTABLE only shows up info on dataset in sashelp, not in work ...

[Kurt_Bremser]

---

@hellohere wrote:

my SASHELP.VTABLE only shows up info on dataset in sashelp, not in work ...

---

SASHELP.VTABLE has metadata for ALL datasets in currently assigned libraries, which includes WORK:

data class;
set sashelp.class;
run;

data _null_;
set sashelp.vtable;
where libname ="WORK" and memname = "CLASS";
put nobs=;
run;

Log:

 69         data class;
 70         set sashelp.class;
 71         run;
 
 NOTE: There were 19 observations read from the data set SASHELP.CLASS.
 NOTE: The data set WORK.CLASS has 19 observations and 5 variables.
 NOTE:  Verwendet wurde: DATA statement - (Gesamtverarbeitungszeit):
       real time           0.00 seconds
       user cpu time       0.00 seconds
       system cpu time     0.00 seconds
       memory              827.78k
       OS Memory           24228.00k
       Timestamp           28.02.2022 01:56:05 nachm.
       Step Count                        24  Switch Count  2
       Page Faults                       0
       Page Reclaims                     183
       Page Swaps                        0
       Voluntary Context Switches        11
       Involuntary Context Switches      0
       Block Input Operations            0
       Block Output Operations           264
       
 
 72         
 73         data _null_;
 74         set sashelp.vtable;
 75         where libname ="WORK" and memname = "CLASS";
 76         put nobs=;
 77         run;
 
 nobs=19
 NOTE: There were 1 observations read from the data set SASHELP.VTABLE.
       WHERE (libname='WORK') and (memname='CLASS');

[Patrick]

hello there

What's wrong with SQL querying dictionary tables (=NOT a select count(*) ). Anyhow here one way without SQL.

data _null_;
  call symputx('n_obs',nobs);
  stop;
  set sashelp.class nobs=nobs;
run;

%put &=n_obs;

[hellohere]

this works great. SQL count seems to me it goes count rather than grab from meta info 

[Ksharp · Accepted solution]

%let dsid=%sysfunc(open(sashelp.class));
%let nobs=%sysfunc(attrn(&dsid,nlobs));
%let dsid=%sysfunc(close(&dsid));

%put SASHELP.CLASS has &nobs. obs. ;