There is a bug in SAS that aggressively limits the length of variable names and cripples SAS's ability to interface with any well maintained literally name database. ... View more

Hi, Two variables of the same name are used in a merge without being listed in the by statement is usually unintentionnal (usually done by mistake). As far I'm aware of, the only way to be informed about it is to display information messages in the log using options msglevel=i;. But That option is not in the default setting. The message is not really easy to notice (black color) and not listed in the interface         Other messages which are usually not that relevant popup on the way with this option. Would it be possible to have a global option called for example mergeoverwrite= (or any other relevant name) with WARN by default (as VARLENCHK=)?   data one; key=1; x=1; output; key=2; x=2; output; run; data two; key=1; x=5; output; key=2; x=6; output; run; *options mergeoverwrite=WARN; options msglevel=i; data demo; merge one two; by key; run;   ... View more

Users can open a SAS data set in Enterprise Guide without realising that they will be locking this data set. If a data set is left open in Enterprise Guide for an extended period, even though it may not be actively browsed, it can prevent any updates.   I have created an add-in (Simple Data Viewer) to copy a SAS data set into a DataGrid object, which separates the view of the data from the source data set, and does not need any lock to be set. This means that the source data set can be updated as required.   Can this functionality be incorporated into Enterprise Guide? ... View more

Hi,   The idea is to allow to use hyphen(-) notation in the DATA statement. So the following code would work: data b1-b10 ; set sashelp.class ; run ; and create 10 data sets b1 to b10. The idea is to make it symmetric to SET statement behavior such as: data a1 a2 a3 a4 a5 a6 a7 a8 a9 a10 ; do value1 = 1 to 10; output; end; run ; data All_a1_to_a10 ; set a1-a10; run ; All the best Bart   ... View more

I suggest the creation of additional methods for hash objects which provide the capability to first "position" a pointer in the search tree (e.g. hash.pos_key()), even if the key is not found, and then find the next key in the sorting sequence (hash.next_key()). The second method should have an option to search "up" or "down", the default being "up". The first method will always return a zero, while the second method will return a non-zero return code if the beginning (while searching "down") or the end (while searching "up") of the hash has been reached. Multiple entries for a given key should be treated as one.   ... View more

&SYSRC holds the return code of the last external command executed. But it is not set when a filename pipe is used as input (and therefore runs the command included in the physical name if the fileref). See this: filename oscmd pipe "ls /garbage 2>&1"; %put &=sysrc.; data _null_; infile oscmd; input; put _infile_; run; %put &=sysrc.; x "ls /garbage 2>&1"; %put &=sysrc.; Log: 27 filename oscmd pipe "ls /garbage 2>&1"; 28 29 %put &=sysrc.; SYsrc=0 30 31 data _null_; 32 infile oscmd; 33 input; 34 put _infile_; 35 run; NOTE: The infile OSCMD is: Pipe-Kommando="ls /garbage 2>&1" ls: 0653-341 The file /garbage does not exist. NOTE: 1 record was read from the infile OSCMD. The minimum record length was 46. The maximum record length was 46. NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time): real time 0.01 seconds cpu time 0.00 seconds 36 37 %put &=sysrc.; SYsrc=0 38 39 x "ls /garbage 2>&1" 39 ! ; 40 41 %put &=sysrc.; SYsrc=2 I therefore suggest that SYSRC is also updated when external commands are run via the filename pipe mechanism, as it would enhance the communication with the host OS. ... View more

The FDA asked us to use a method other than Wald and strongly suggested that we use Miettinen-Nurminen 1985 (MN) for computing confidence limits (CL) at summary level. This method is becoming increasingly popular and is used by many pharmaceutical companies, including Merck, Abbvie, and Moderna (cf. simple Google search). SAS has provided a partial implementation of MN scoring through COMMONRISKDIFF(CL=score) where the within-stratum calculation follows MN 1985 but inverse-variance stratum weights are used at the summary level. This method comes from the 2013 Agresti book. Has this method ever been published in a peer-reviewed article? Has it ever been used in a clinical trial submission? Is this method popular, i.e., number of citations? The lack of visibility in the use of this "SCORE" method prevent the use of this algorithm in a submission to health authorities.   The current alternative is to use R. Indeed, two packages have been developed to calculate CL based on MN 1985 method: metalite.ae (Merck) and scoreci. SAS users have already written about this 4 years ago.  I am a biostatistical manager at Bristol Myers Squibb. This issue has risen to the VP level as we plan to adopt MN 1985 in all our submissions in all the therapeutic areas. Confidence limits play an important role because they influence key analyses such as futility analysis for the primary outcome. Will you provide this algorithm and if so, when? ... View more

Request to SAS: Please provide, in every SAS version, a tool to convert files/catalogs between 32 and 64 bit (without the need to buy a licence for a new 'SAS module'). This should not be a problem for experienced (SAS) programmer. Thanks. ... View more

It would be handy if SAS accepted date literals in ISO format: '2018-04-05'd and datetime literals: '2018-04-04T08:34:25.678'dt  (the "T" may be replaced by a blank) in addition to the default DATE9. format. ... View more

Currently the Change Data Source facility in SAS Visual Analytics affects all objects using that Data Source in a given Report.   I think that the Change Data Source facility should be amended so that it can be applied to individual objects within a Report, not just the entire Report.   I propose that when a user invokes the Change Data Source facility, a dialog box is presented to the user that lists all objects in the current report and, alongside each object, its data source. The user can then choose the individual objects that they want the data source change to apply to, or they can choose a Select All option, which is what they get at  present.   The workarounds and wasted effort currently required to simply change the data source used by a given object, say a Cross Tab within a Report, is just another reason for people to avoid using SAS Visual Analytics. It makes life too hard for a new starter and just puts them off. Fixing this anomaly will get more people to love VA......even more 😎.   Cheers,   Downunder Dave Wellington     ... View more

Using EG is like walking on glass shards, so I will not attempt to list all the deep cuts and all the paper cuts one has to continuously deal with. Still, one is annoying and repetitive enough that I must take the time to raise it here:     When deleting a table, one is sometimes told that the table is locked, as seen above.   The table is not visible in the process tree even though it is opened (without being identified) by one of the programs, and the easiest way is then to go back to the process flow view, search for the table somewhere in the flow, delete its shortcut there, and then one can delete the table proper.   Please provide a prompt instead of this ludicrous "unexpected error".       ... View more

The RENAME statement (and dataset options) can now handle renaming lists of variable if both the SOURCE and TARGET names are simple numerical suffix lists.  So I could write statements like these: rename old1-old5=new1-new5 ; rename old1-old5=new6-new10 ; rename old1-old5=old2-old6; But frequently we have other lists of variable names, including just simple space delimited names like you would use in any SAS statement.  I would request that we enhance the RENAME statement to allow the addition of extra parenthesis to rename lists of variables.  So things like this: rename (a b c d e)=(name age sex height weight); rename old1-old5=(a b c d e); rename a--e=var1-var5 ; rename (name age sex height weight)=var1-var5 ; rename new:=var1-var5;   ... View more

SAS studio is missing the Prompt feature from SAS Enterprise guide. The current work around is difficult and if we were to use SAS studio as a replacement for Enterprise Guide, we need this feature. ... View more

There are some common variations on how to create delimited files used by data software, like Excel and Redshift, that are currently not directly supported by SAS.  Of these there are two main ones that I think should be easy to implement and solve the most common problems.   Support for reading and writing files with embedded end-of-line characters.  This is common for CSV files generated by EXCEL.  Currently SAS can only handle files where the embedded line break characters do not exactly match the end-of-line characters.  So SAS can read a file that uses CR+LF as end of line and has embedded CR or LF characters, but not records that have embedded CR+LF combinations.  But when the field is properly quoted this is a format that Excel (and others) do support.    This one is especially annoying since it is difficult to program around this limitation.  Currently to read files like this users need to pre-process the whole file to remove or replace the embedded line break characters.  And for writing files SAS does not currently automatically add quotes around field values that contain the end-of-line characters.  So users might need to use the ~ modify on PUT statements to force SAS to add quotes and end up with files that have more quotes than are really needed.   Support for the use of an escape character To protect special characters like delimiters, CR, LF, quotes and the escape character itself a lot of databases (and programming languages) use an escape character, typically a backslash.  This method of protecting special characters in text is popular with many languages, for example Unix command shells, and has been adopted by major database platforms like Redshift.  Typically this is done instead of adding quotes around values that contain special characters. Some even try to add quotes around the values but instead of doubling the quotes that are in the data they add this backslash character. SAS should be able to read a delimited file that is using an escape character instead of quoting to protect embedded special characters. And it should be able to write files that use escaping instead of quoting to protect special characters. ... View more

It would be nice to have a CAT_() type function that uses the format applied to the variables rather than Best for numeric variables.    For example, I would have preferred if the WANT_STRING was the same as the output from the HAVE_STRING code, since a format is applied to the variables already.    data have; format date1-date20 date9.; format datec1-datec20 $9.; length datec1-datec20 $9. x_string y_string $256.; array _date(*) date1-date20; array _datec(*) $ datec1-datec20; do i=1 to dim(_date); _date(I)=floor(ranuni(25)*365+1); _datec(I)=trim(put(_date(I), date9.)); end; have_string=catx(", ", of _date(*)); want_string=catx(", ", of _datec(*)); run; proc print ; run; ... View more

This post from @Kurt_Bremser triggered an idea I had for a while but I keep forgetting to share it. https://communities.sas.com/t5/Community-Matters/documentation-sas-com-inoperable/m-p/691501#M4399   It is not very often, although sometimes documentation.sas.com is offline or has hiccups. It is however often than documentation.sas.com might be blocked in certain scenarios, and it is often that this resource is critical in certain scenarios.   Would it be possible to create a procedure to generate a local mirror of documentation.sas.com?    - On one side, this was considered in the past, as SASWebDoc is an app to have documentation of SAS Base locally available. So the idea is not really new.   - On other side, I assume the collection of documentation.sas.com can be quite large and it has periodic updates. This is something to consider.   My idea is that it would be interesting to have the following functionality:   - Enable subsets of documentation.sas.com, based on products, solutions, etc - Have an updated list of those subsets, their sizes and the last update date - A procedure that would allow to create a mirror of selected updates, and to update them (only the diffs) per request   What do you think of this idea? Feasible? Other requirements to add? ... View more

I assert that the warning received when using the outobs= option in PROC SQL is inconsistent with other SAS options, such as firstobs=, obs=, [startobs=, endobs= (spde engine)].  Yes, I know they are input not output options.   I further assert the warning is unnecessary since I explicity coded the outobs= option.  Why warn me for something I've explicitly chosen?   Finally, numerous Google hits will show that end users find the warning to be user unfriendly.   The undocumented NOWARN option to PROC SQL will suppress the warning, but this suppresses other warnings that I might be interested in.   So just get rid of the outobs= warning as a bad idea that's been fixed by SAS 😉   If there's a good reason why the warning exists that overrides the above reasoning please let me know.   (And does anyone know why SAS chose startobs= and endobs= for the SPDE engine instead of firstobs= and obs=?  They appear to do the same thing, and any differences are so subtle that the different syntax seems unnecessary.) ... View more

Can the following be implemented? : A colon preceding a suffix selects with variables with the common suffix, as would select variables AC and BC in the second data step below, without error: data have; AC=1; AD=2; BC=3; BD=4; AEC=5; BED=6; data _Null_; set have; format A: z4.; putlog _All_; data _Null_; set have; format :C z4.; putlog _All_; run; Colons sandwiching a search term as a use of colon wildcards, as in:  format :E:  z5.;     Also see sasnrd.com = Drop or Keep Variables With Same Suffix ... View more

It would be nice if you could combine Containers in VA to create some more dynamic reporting.  For instance you could put a horizonal container inside of a stack container allowing the user to flip through pairs of visuals together.  This gives you more control over content presentation within a single sheet. ... View more