Technology Tales

Selecting SAS code in the Program Editor on UNIX

5^th June 2007

Here's a possible bugbear with programming using the SAS Display Manager in UNIX, selecting sections of code and running them. In the installations that I have encountered, the mouse selection is not retained, so the code selection cannot be run. There is a fix for this that is not the most obvious. Going to the Preferences dialogue box (Tools > Options > Preferences... from the menu bar) and selecting the Editing tab brings up the screen below:

Ensuring that "Automatically store selection" is switched off, as shown above, will allow one to select and submit sections of code from a SAS program like what is normal practice with Windows SAS. Though it isn't an obvious solution, it does the trick for me.

Finding the number of observations in a SAS dataset

16^th May 2007

There are a number of ways of finding out the number of observations (also known as records or rows) in a SAS data set and, while they are documented in a number of different places, I have decided to collect them together in one place. At the very least, it means that I can find them again.

First up is the most basic and least efficient method: read the whole data set and increment a counter to pick up its last value. The END option allows you to find the last value of count without recourse to FIRST.x/LAST.x logic.

data _null_;
    set test end=eof;
    count+1;
    if eof then call symput(”nobs”,count);
run;

The next option is a more succinct SQL variation on the same idea. The colon prefix denotes a macro variable whose value is to be assigned in the SELECT statement; there should be no surprise as to what the COUNT(*) does…

proc sql noprint;
    select count(*) into :nobs from test;
quit;

Continuing the SQL theme, accessing the dictionary tables is another route to the same end and has the advantage of needing to access the actual data set in question. You may have an efficiency saving when you are testing large datasets, but you are still reading some data here.

proc sql noprint;
    select nobs into :nobs from dictionary.tables where libname=”WORK” and memname=”TEST”;
quit;

The most efficient way to do the trick is just to access the data set header. Here’s the data step way to do it:

data _null_;
    if 0 then set test nobs=nobs;
    call symputx(”nobs”,nobs);
    stop;
run;

The IF/STOP logic stops the data set read in its tracks so that only the header is accessed, saving the time otherwise used to read the data from the data set. Using the SYMPUTX routine avoids the need to explicitly code a numeric to character transformation; it’s a SAS 9 feature, though.

To finish, here is the most succinct and efficient way of all: the use of macro and SCL functions. It’s my preferred option, and you don’t need a SAS/AF licence to do it, either.

%let dsid=%sysfunc(open(work.test,in));
%let nobs=%sysfunc(attrn(&dsid,nobs));
%if &dsid > 0 %then %let rc=%sysfunc(close(&dsid));

The first line opens the data set, and the last one closes it; this is needed because you are not using data step or SCL and could leave a data set open, causing problems later. The second line is what captures the number of observations from the header of the data set using the SCL ATTRN function called by %SYSFUNC.