SAS Log doesn't update after repeated use of break function in Base SAS

[DeepakSwain]

Hi there,

I am working a dataset having more than 3 million records. Following use of break tab couple of times, I noticed that log doesn't update. I believe following restart of session, I will overcome the problem easily. As I am having number of temporary tables in WORK, I don't want to restart the session. Is there any way to overcome the issue without restarting SAS session. 

Thanks in advance for your kind reply. 

Regards,

[FreelanceReinh]

Hi @DeepakSwain,

Good question. You're not the only one who has run into this problem. Does it help to redirect the log (maybe back and forth) using PROC PRINTTO?

If it's just because of the WORK datasets (and possibly formats), this inelegant workaround might help:

By setting

options noworkterm;

you prevent SAS from erasing the existing work library on termination.

Then you could start a new SAS session and move datasets, the work format catalog and what else can be moved from the old work library to the new one. This should not take much time as long as both directories reside on the same disk partition (which depends on your environment and option settings), so that the data are not physically rewritten.

Remaining issues, however, might be that libnames, filenames, macro variables, option settings etc. need to be restored in the new session. (Some companies have macros to store/restore all that session-specific information.)