Are these an unacceptable solutions to a SAS problem?

[rogerjdeangelis]

Are these an unacceptable solutions to a SAS problem?

Seems to a lot of controversy about the relation between R and SAS.

A user wanted to convert excel to a csv

proc iml;
    submit / R;
    library(rio)
    convert('d:xls/xls_sample.xlsx','d:xls/xls_sample.csv')
endsubmit;
quit;

or

%utl_submit_r64(
   library(rio);
   convert('d:xls/xls_sample.xlsx','d:xls/xls_sample.csv');
);

[ChrisHemedinger]

Hi @rogerjdeangelis,

I think people appreciate knowing about all options.  Using SAS to call R functions for utilities like this can be handy for your toolbox, but most SAS users don't have R configured within their SAS environments.  So when providing an answer in these forums, the suggestion to use SAS' integration methods with R is academic -- most people can't apply those techniques in their workplace.  So a pure SAS answer is usually preferred, and is still the most relevant/helpful response that you can provide.

For this particular example, SAS has import/export utilities that can do similar work if you have SAS/ACCESS to PC Files (to read the Excel files).  And if you don't have SAS/ACCESS but do have ability to call OS commands (required by R integration methods), then you can achieve the same by using VB Script or PowerShell or Python without needing a specialized R environment.

For people who do have R on their SAS environment, the main benefit is the ability to reuse R packages to experiment with methods that others have contributed to the R community, or perhaps to reuse work created by colleagues who use R primarily.  See this demo and discussion from Rick:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmRQ3MtkG6A