DBailey, thanks for the reply. I tried your suggestion and it still resolves to variable name not its value. ... View more

As an alternative for xcopy, I've been using the Windows robocopy command to copy files via a unnamed pipe.  Robocopy has a long set of command line options and using the pipe provides a lot of information back to the SAS log.  Here's an example:   %let srcdir=\\dave\data\tables; %let destir=C:\tables\; filename robocopy pipe "robocopy &srcdir &destir /NP /R:1 /W:1" console=min; data _null_; infile robocopy; input; put _infile_; run; filename robocopy clear; and the SAS log:   NOTE: The infile ROBOCOPY is: Unnamed Pipe Access Device, PROCESS=robocopy \\dave\data\tables\ C:\tables\ /NP /R:1 /W:1, RECFM=V,LRECL=32767 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROBOCOPY :: Robust File Copy for Windows ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Started : Thursday, June 7, 2018 1:47:23 AM Source : \\dave\data\tables\ Dest : C:\tables\ Files : *.* Options : *.* /DCOPY:DA /COPY:DAT /NP /R:1 /W:1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 39 \\dave\tables\ *EXTRA File 1019.0 m invcurr_sc.sas7bdat *EXTRA File 44.0 m invcurr_sc.sas7bndx *EXTRA File 799.2 m invcurr_sc2.sas7bdat *EXTRA File 46.9 m invcurr_sc2.sas7bndx Newer 10.9 m allps.sas7bdat Newer 1.1 m allps.sas7bndx Newer 262144 atlas.sas7bdat Newer 65536 atlas.sas7bndx Newer 183.5 m commente.sas7bdat Newer 69.3 m commente.sas7bndx Newer 46.4 m emailid.sas7bdat Newer 2.1 m fmadj_ptg.sas7bdat Newer 65536 fmadj_ptg.sas7bndx Newer 196608 galloc.sas7bdat Newer 196608 goodgs.sas7bdat Newer 97792 goodgs.sas7bndx Newer 27.8 m icodes.sas7bdat Newer 196608 intl.sas7bdat Newer 97792 intl.sas7bndx Newer 104.8 m invcons.sas7bdat Newer 25.2 m invcons.sas7bndx Newer 1.8 g invcurr.sas7bdat Newer 551.8 m invcurr.sas7bndx Newer 18.7 m invhard.sas7bdat Newer 2.0 m invhard.sas7bndx Newer 22.0 m invlookup.sas7bdat Newer 5.8 m invlookup.sas7bndx Newer 13.3 m invsalee.sas7bdat Newer 3.5 m invsalee.sas7bndx Newer 262144 regdr.sas7bdat Newer 97792 regdr.sas7bndx ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Total Copied Skipped Mismatch FAILED Extras Dirs : 1 0 0 0 0 0 Files : 39 27 12 0 0 4 Bytes : 3.741 g 2.959 g 800.80 m 0 0 1.864 g Times : 0:01:38 0:01:37 0:00:00 0:00:00 Speed : 32434077 Bytes/sec. Speed : 1855.892 MegaBytes/min. Ended : Thursday, June 7, 2018 1:49:02 AM NOTE: 61 records were read from the infile ROBOCOPY. The minimum record length was 0. The maximum record length was 81. NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time): real time 1:38.41 user cpu time 0.00 seconds system cpu time 0.00 seconds memory 295.71k OS Memory 17240.00k Timestamp 06/07/2018 01:49:02 AM Step Count 42 Switch Count 0 271 272 filename robocopy clear; NOTE: Fileref ROBOCOPY has been deassigned. ... View more

@DaveHorne I'll let you know if can free the time to try M.2 drives, and please do likewise. 🙂   Yes SGIO is definitely an option to be considered for speeding up sequential access on large data sets. Here is a benchmark in case you are interested in hard(ish) figures.   ... View more

Another possibility to try : filename submit "C:\temp\submit.txt" encoding="UTF-8"; data _null_; length text $32767; retain text ''; infile msghtml flowover dlmstr='//' end=last; input; text=cats(text,_infile_); if last then call symput('submit',text); run; Then on the proc http: in=&submit Modified from https://blogs.sas.com/content/sasdummy/2016/07/12/how-to-read-the-contents-of-a-file-into-a-sas-macro-variable/ ... View more

Depending on your platform, there are also host specific options that may help.  For example, on Windows Server I've used SGIO (for mulit-gigabyte sized SAS data sets) and MEMLIB (to process the data in memory). ... View more

Maybe you need to use PROC PRINTTO in your SAS program? ... View more