PROC EXPORT inside a call execute in DATA STEP

[nketata]

I have many files to be exported to Excel with several conditions in the data set, so I wrote a code like this :

data cars;

retain origin model cylinders ;

set sashelp.cars;

where Origin='Asia';

call execute ('proc export data=cars outfile="C:\TEMP\CARS_FROM_ASIA.csv" DBMS=CSV REPLACE; run;');

run;

I was disappointed when I saw that SAS exports the cars file line by line, so the execution time is very long (my files are much larger than this example).

Is there a way (or an option)  to force the CALL EXECUTE to export the data in one batch ?

[Astounding · Accepted solution]

The difficulty is that you are generating many CALL EXECUTES ... one for each observation that meets the WHERE condition.  You can get around that using:

if _n_=1 then

 call execute ('proc export data=cars outfile="C:\TEMP\CARS_FROM_ASIA.csv" DBMS=CSV REPLACE; run;');

However, this may lead to other questions.  Right now, there is no advantage to using CALL EXECUTE.  You could have just hard-coded the PROC EXPORT following the DATA step.  It is possible that the hard-coding will not be possible because your real problem is a bit more complex.  So we may have to revisit the real problem.  But for now, add IF _N_=1 THEN ....

[nketata]

Thanks, the proposed solution worked. I knew I  was missing only a small piece of code.

And yes, my files are more complex and I am calling macro variables in the export so to malke a long story short,  it is better for me  to have the export inside the data set.