Personally I spend very little time writing data set names longer 12 or 16 characters and generally the same with variables. If I need more text to describe something I set a variable or data set Label.
And what is so special about 128? Any arbitrary limit is that: arbitrary. I routinely deal with data sources where the column headings in text files (i.e. "names") exceed 200 characters. (My variables are typically fewer than 16 characters but I have the full text as Labels).
I really do not want to write SQL code where have to reference every variable you want by name if coding properly and type out dozens of 128 character variable names.
I really really do not want variable names that exceed the typical length that set for coding lines in my editor (80 characters).
I admit that it would be nice to have better conversions for SAS connecting to external data sets that have allowed such uncontrolled growth in variable or table names.
And how many characters like space and */?\|{}[]()&%$#@'" do expect to include in those names?
Back in the day there was talk of increasing the naming limit from 32 to 128 in the "next" major SAS release Version 9.5. Now it appears that SAS 9.4 will be the last major SAS 9 release and all SAS users will eventually migrate to SAS Viya. Viya is where any naming limit increases will be implemented.
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