Well, excuse me but "duh". 40 data test; 41 length test $1000.; 42 do i=1 to 100000000; 43 test=" 43 ! .... 43 ! ..."; NOTE: The quoted string currently being processed has become more than 262 characters long. You might have unbalanced quotation marks. 44 output; 45 end; 46 drop i; 47 run; NOTE: The data set WORK.TEST has 100000000 observations and 1 variables. NOTE: Compressing data set WORK.TEST decreased size by 97.82 percent. Compressed is 33607 pages; un-compressed would require 1538462 pages. NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time): real time 56.63 seconds cpu time 48.06 seconds Output dataset size is 2gb *compressed*. SAS would have written 100s of GB without the compress option being set. That's a 1000 character string about 99% whitespace. Now, if, as I said, you compress the output dataset with 7z, on fast, the resulting output dataset is <200mb. Like I said, SAS has * a lot * of scope for additional compression.
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