TOPIC: TAR
ERROR: This range is repeated, or values overlap: - .
15th September 2012This is another posting in an occasional series on SAS error and warning messages that aren't as clear as they'd need to be. What produced the message was my creation of a control data set that I then wished to use to create a data-driven (in)format. It was the PROC FORMAT step that issued the message, and I got no (in)format created. However, there were no duplicate entries in the control data set as the message suggested to me, so a little more investigation was needed.
What that revealed was that there might be one variable missing from the data set that I needed to have. The SAS documentation has defined FMTNAME, START and LABEL as compulsory variables, with each of them containing the following: format name, initial value and displayed value. My intention was this: to create a numeric code variable for one containing character strings using my data-driven format, with then numbers specified within a character variable as it should be. What was missing then was TYPE.
This variable can be one of the following values: C for character formats, I for numeric informats, J for character informats, N for numeric formats and P for picture formats. Due to it being a conversion from character values to numeric ones, I set the values of TYPE to I and used an input function to do the required operations. The code for successfully creating the informat is below:
proc sql noprint;
create table tpts as
select distinct "_vstpt" as fmtname,
"I" as type,
vstpt as start,
vstpt as end,
strip(put(vstptnum,best.)) as label
from test
where not missing(vstptnum);
quit;proc format library=work cntlin=tpts;
run;
quit;
Though I didn't need to do it, I added an END variable too for the sake of completeness. In this case, the range is such that its start and end are the same and there are cases where that will not be the case, though I am not dwelling on those.
A fallback installation routine?
9th November 2007In a previous sustained spell of Linux meddling, the following installation routine was one that I encountered rather too often when RPM's didn't do what I required of them (having a SUSE distro in a world dominated by a Red Hat standard didn't make things any easier...):
tar xzvf progname.tar.gz; cd progname
The first part of the command extracts from a tarball compressed using gzip and the second one changes into the new directory created by the extraction. For files compressed with bzip use:
tar xjvf progname.tar.bz2; cd progname
The command below configures, compiles and installs the package, running the last part of the command in its own shell.
./configure; make; su -c make install
Yes, the procedure is a bit convoluted, but it would have been fine if it always worked. My experience was that the process was a far from foolproof one. For instance, an unsatisfied dependency is all that is needed to stop you in your tracks. Attempting to install a GNOME application on a KDE-based system is as good a way to encounter this result as any. Other horrid errors also played havoc with hopeful plans from time to time.
It shouldn't surprise you to find that I will be staying away from the compilation/installation business with my main Ubuntu system. Synaptic Package Manager and its satisfactory dependency resolution fulfil my needs well and there is the Update Manager too; I'll be leaving it for Canonical to do the testing and make the decisions regarding what is ready for my PC as they maintain their software repositories. My past tinkering often created a mess, and I'll be leaving that sort of experimentation for the safe confines of a virtual machine from now on...