Create a blank SAS program file at execution time

[Ramakanthkrovi]

Hi Guys,

Is it possible to create a sas program file (initially without any code)  in a given folder (library)?

Note: I am not asking about creating a dataset, I need to create a blank sas program file during run time. Like invoking a macro should automatically create a filename.sas program in a folder.

Regards,

Ramakanth

[SASKiwi · Accepted solution]

Yes, a SAS program is stored as a text file on disk which you can create in a DATA step. Why do you want to do this?

data _null_;
  file pgm "C:\Temp\MySASProgram.sas";
  put "* A Comment;";
run;

[Ramakanthkrovi]

I just wanted to create a file and write a program using a macro. Sorry if that wasn't clear in the initial question.

[SASKiwi]

With macro code you usually don't need to write program code to a separate file, you can just generate the code from within a SAS macro just by calling it:

data _null_;
  file pgm "C:\Temp\MySASProgram.sas";
  put "* A Comment;";
run;

%include "C:\Temp\MySASProgram.sas";

* Above code does exactly the same thing as the following macro;

%macro comment;

* A Comment;

%mend comment;
%comment;

[RW9]

You do not even need to write to a file, just use call execute, and no file writing involved.  Saved I/O.

[andreas_lds]

Can't see any reason to do this, but a data-step can do this:

data _null_;
   file "PATH_TO_FILE\empty.sas";
run;

[Patrick]

One way to go:

data _null_;
  stop;
  file 'c:\temp\test2.sas';
run;