Have you heard? Rick Aster has just released the Sixth Edition of his ever-popular Professional SAS Programmer’s Pocket Reference, freshly updated to include SAS 9.3. You might also notice that it has a fresh look—a smaller, more compact trim size. Rick has always wanted this book to be an easy reference to use, not only in how the content is organized but also in how the physical book “works” for the reader. The faster programmers can find the information, the more productive they can be!

In the almost 20 years that the Pocket Reference has been available, Rick has experimented with different trim sizes. The first edition was the largest and worked well on bookstore shelves, but didn’t quite match the image of a true “Pocket Reference.” With the next several editions of the book, pages were narrower—about 4.5 inches wide. And, now, with this sixth edition, the page format is shorter but wider, and the book stays open more easily.

From Rick Aster:

“For the 6th edition, SAS has grown so much I knew it was going to be a challenge to fit SAS 9.3 into a pocket reference book. I wanted to make sure we made the right decisions to make the book as useful as we could make it. We had to take a hard look at everything, and at one point I had imagined that we could fit in more material by making the pages larger. But what we found was that if we trimmed a little smaller, people would actually use the book more often, and not only that, they would look up answers faster. Not a lot faster, but if you save 1 or 2 seconds each time, that could be half a day of a programmer’s time over the life of the book.”

Try it out, and let Rick know what you think! You can order this new book in SAS Publishing's bookstore.