TOPIC: SIGTUNA MUNICIPALITY
New version of SAS on the way
16th January 2008This is something of a newsflash posting, but this morning's issue of the SAS Tech Report newsletter has said at last when SAS 9.2 is expected to be released. Though SAS has been talking a bit about 9.2, dates were elusive and, to a point, they still are. Nevertheless, hearing the Q1 of this year is the time slot for the unveiling is better than knowing nothing at all. Am I alone in wondering if it is coming later than was planned?
A throwback to the past: an appearance of MACROGEN
4th October 2007Recently, I was reviewing a log of a program being run by SAS 9.1.3 on a Solaris system and spotted lines like the following:
MACROGEN(MACRO1): OPTIONS NOMPRINT NOMPRINTNEST
NOTE: PROCEDURE DISPLAY used (Total process time):
real time 0.73 seconds
cpu time 0.50 seconds
MPRINT(MACRO1): SOURCE SOURCE2 NOTES;
The appearance of the word MACROGEN made me wonder if there was another system option that I had missed. A quick search of the SAS website threw up a support note that shed some light on the situation. Apparently, MACROGEN is the SAS v5 forbear of today's MPRINT, MLOGIC, and SYMBOLGEN options and would seem to be obsolete in these days. Having started programming SAS in the days of version 6, I had missed out on MACROGEN and so used its replacements instead, hence my never coming across the option. Quite what it's doing showing up in a SAS 9 log is another story: and there I was thinking that SAS 9 was the result of a full rewrite... Now, I am not so sure, but at least I know what MACROGEN is if someone ever takes the time to ask me.