Technology Tales

Platform-independent file deletion in SAS programming

Published on 11^th September 2025 Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

There are times when you need to delete a file from within a SAS program that is not one of its inbuilt types, such as datasets or catalogues. Many choose to use X commands or the SYSTASK facility, even if these issue operating system-specific commands that obstruct portability. Also, it should be recalled that system administrators can make these unavailable to users as well. Thus, it is better to use methods that are provided within SAS itself.

The first step is to define a file reference pointing to the file that you need to delete:

filename myfile '<full path of file to be removed>';

With that accomplished, you can move on to deleting the file in a null data step, one where no output file is generated. The FDELETE function does that in the code below using the MYFILE file reference declared already. That step issues a return code used in the provision of feedback to the user, with 0 indicated success and non-zero values indicating failure.

data _null_;
  rc = fdelete('myfile');
  if rc = 0 then put 'File deleted successfully.';
  else put 'Error deleting file. RC=' rc;
run;

With the above out of the way, you then can clear the file reference to tidy up things afterwards:

filename myfile clear;

Some may consider that SAS programs are single use items that may not be moved from one system to another. However, I have been involved in several of these, particularly between Windows, UNIX and Linux, so I know the value of keeping things streamlined and some SAS programs are multi-use anyway. Anything that cuts down on workload when there is much else to do cannot be discounted.