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Programming Tips

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerJune 7, 2012 36

How to search your SAS Enterprise Guide project files using automation

If you are like many SAS Enterprise Guide users, you've amassed a large collection of project files (EGP files) that contain important content: programs, logs, notes, results, and more. However, to most tools and processes, the EGP file is opaque. That is, you can't see what's inside of it unless

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerMay 22, 2012 1

Query the Windows registry within your SAS program

On the SAS-L mailing list, a participant posed this question (paraphrased): How can I tell which date format my Windows session is using: European format (with day first) versus USA format (with month first)? I'm reading in output from a Windows file listing, and need to know how to interpret

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerMay 15, 2012 51

How much time will your process flow take to run?

SAS users, by definition, do not embrace the mysterious. That's one of the main reasons that they use SAS: to demystify some data or process. And so, when you (as a SAS user) have gone to the trouble of designing a process flow in SAS Enterprise Guide, you like to

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerMay 1, 2012 108

The top gotchas when moving to 64-bit SAS for Windows

Many SAS customers are quickly adopting 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows, and they are pleased-as-punch when they find a 64-bit version of SAS to run on it. They waste no time in deploying the new version, only to find that a few things don't work quite the same as they

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerApril 3, 2012 23

Are 64-bit client applications twice as good as 32-bit applications?

In September 2010, I questioned whether you should care about native 64-bit client applications (or the lack thereof). At the time, SAS did not have a 64-bit version of SAS Enterprise Guide or SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office. A skeptical reader might assume that I was just trying to make

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerMarch 23, 2012 9

Improving on a SAS programming pattern

Earlier this week I described a common programming pattern in the SAS macro language. The pattern sets up a loop for processing each distinct value of a classification variable. The program uses the PROC SQL SELECT INTO feature to populate SAS macro variables. The effect: you can roll your own

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerMarch 20, 2012 14

Implement BY processing for your entire SAS program

How to write a SAS macro program to repeat your SAS processing for each value of a BY grouping variable.

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerMarch 1, 2012 13

Numbers great and small: the problem of Big Datum

About once a month, a customer approaches SAS and asks a question of significance. By "significance", I don't necessarily mean "of great importance", but instead I mean "of how SAS handles large numbers, or floating-point values with many significant digits". In response, we always first ask why they asked. This

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerFebruary 22, 2012 9

SAS Report: You're soaking in it

Do you want your report to look good on the web, or to look good when you print it? Pick one. Before the SAS Report file format, that was the choice that you faced. HTML is perfect for the web browser. It's easy to scroll through tables, to apply an

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerFebruary 11, 2012 95

How do I export from SAS to Excel files: Let me count the ways

I have a love-hate relationship with spreadsheet data. I am interested in finding data to analyze, and if it arrives in the form of a spreadsheet, I'll take it. And I like to deliver results and reports, but often my constituents ask for it as a spreadsheet that they can

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