Disapointing behaviour using ENCODING option - consider for next release

[Shmuel]

While trying to contribute to https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Programming/Encoding-from-LATIN1-to-UTF8-w-o-changing-files-time-... I proposed to make a combination of linux copy (cp) with -p option to preserve the original attributes, and create a view that will translate the encoding into the required one.

Later I used SAS-UE to test my proposed code and found that it doesn't work as expected. Code and log are:

73         data work.class (encoding='Latin1') / view=work.class;
 74          set sashelp.class;
 75         run;
 
 ERROR: The ENCODING= data set option is not supported for DATA step views.
 NOTE: View not saved due to errors.
 NOTE: The SAS System stopped processing this step because of errors.

It could be worthful to enable encoding, as translation tool, to views without need to copy the whole data thus saving disk space.

[ChrisNZ · Accepted solution]

@Shmuel  You might want to post this in the SASware Ballot Ideas forum.

[Shmuel]

Thanks @ChrisNZ I'll do it soon.

[Tom]

I don't understand why that would be needed.

1     %put %sysfunc(getoption(encoding));
UTF-8
2     proc contents data=sashelp.class; run;

NOTE: PROCEDURE CONTENTS used (Total process time):
      real time           0.39 seconds
      cpu time            0.04 seconds


3     data class / view=class ;
4       set sashelp.class;
5     run;

NOTE: DATA STEP view saved on file WORK.CLASS.
NOTE: A stored DATA STEP view cannot run under a different operating system.
NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time):
      real time           0.13 seconds
      cpu time            0.01 seconds


6
7     data class_copy;
8      set class;
9     run;

NOTE: View WORK.CLASS.VIEW used (Total process time):
      real time           0.09 seconds
      cpu time            0.01 seconds

NOTE: There were 19 observations read from the data set SASHELP.CLASS.
NOTE: There were 19 observations read from the data set WORK.CLASS.
NOTE: The data set WORK.CLASS_COPY has 19 observations and 5 variables.
NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time):
      real time           0.15 seconds
      cpu time            0.04 seconds


10
11    proc contents data=class_copy;
12    run;

NOTE: PROCEDURE CONTENTS used (Total process time):
      real time           0.01 seconds
      cpu time            0.00 seconds

The resulting CLASS_COPY dataset is using the UTF-8 encoding.

[Shmuel]

@Tom, you are running in sas environment already defined with encodig=utf-8.

The problem arised when a mass of datasets were created with encoding=Latin1 but need be

converted to encoding=utf-8.

[Tom]

---

@Shmuel wrote:

@Tom, you are running in sas environment already defined with encodig=utf-8.

The problem arised when a mass of datasets were created with encoding=Latin1 but need be

converted to encoding=utf-8.

---

So do the conversion in a session using UTF-8 encoding.