Using the Lua programming language within Base SAS®
Did you know that you can run Lua code within Base SAS? Learn more about what PROC LUA can do through some examples.
Tag: Problem Solvers
Control the location of tables, graphs, and text with ODS Excel
This article demonstrates the ODS Excel destination’s flexibility and how you can modify its default behavior by using the SHEET_INTERVAL= option.
Launching the Developers Community in SAS Communities
As word spreads that SAS integrates with open source technologies, people are beginning to explore how to connect, interact with, and use SAS in new ways. More and more users are examining the possibilities and with this comes questions like: How do I code A, integrate B, and accomplish C?
Dividing by zero with SAS
Whether you are a strong believer in the power of dividing by zero, agnostic, undecided, a supporter, denier or anything in between and beyond, this blog post will bring all to a common denominator. History of injustice For how many years have you been told that you cannot divide by
How to view or create ODS output without causing SAS® to stop responding or run slowly
SAS makes it easy for you to create a large amount of procedure output with very few statements. However, when you create a large amount of procedure output with the Output Delivery System (ODS), your SAS session might stop responding or run slowly. In some cases, SAS generates a “Not
Embed scalable graphics using the ODS HTML5 destination
Beginning with SAS® 9.4, you can embed graphics output within HTML output using the ODS HTML5 destination. This technique works with SAS/GRAPH® procedures (such as GPLOT and GCHART), SG procedures (such as SGPLOT and SGRENDER), and when you create graphics output with ODS Graphics enabled. Most (if not all) existing
Navigating SAS documentation to find out about new, modified, and updated features
Learn about the latest product features, changes and upgrade information in new sections of SAS product documentation for SAS® 9.4 and SAS® Viya®. SAS' Kathryn McLawhorn tells us all about them.
FAQs about SAS dates, arrays and managing local PC files
Every so often, SAS Technical Support highlights questions that come in on a regular basis. This is one of those times. Here Kim Wilson describes answers to questions covering SAS dates, arrays, and how to reference local PC files from SAS® Enterprise Guide® and SAS® Studio when those applications connect to a SAS® server in UNIX operating environments.
Making great graphs even better with ODS Graphics
This blog post shows a few samples of graphs and explains how you can use new functionality in ODS Graphics to make your old graphs look new again. ODS Graphics is part of Base SAS.
How to automate a data download with PROC HTTP
SAS Technical Support has had several requests from customers who want to use SAS® software to help download their files from a website when there is no application programming interface (API) to do it. This post shows how to automate downloads using PROC HTTP and DATA step, and how to use the HTTP DEBUG statement.
Adding blank rows in TABULATE procedure results
Do you want to insert blank rows into your TABULATE procedure tables? Here's a SAS sample and two other methods that will get the job done.
How to COUNT CATs in SAS
How to count words in SAS with the COUNT functions, and concatenate strings by using the CAT functions. Use these tips to modernize your SAS code!
Keeping the top frequency count (n) for each character variable in a SAS data set
Which character variables have the highest frequency count? You can easily determine this using a variety of procedures that calculate frequency count. For example, the FREQ Procedure or the MEANS Procedure. This blog post illustrates this process through two examples.
A transcoding story (or, How Oliver S. Füßling lost his last name and comes to find it again)
There are many ways to avoid transcoding problems when you have national language characters in SAS programs that you save from a SAS®9 (English) session and move to a UTF-8 environment. In this article, we'll share tips to help you avoid such issues.
How to change your working directory for SAS® with the DLGCDIR DATA step function
Learn how to change your working directory for SAS. Beginning with SAS® 9.4 TS1M4, you can use a new DATA step function, DLGCDIR, to change the location of your working directory.
How to expand the number of available SAS functions within the macro language
The %SYSFUNC macro function allows you to access most SAS® functions. In this blog post, I demonstrate how %SYSFUNC can help in your programming needs when a macro function might not exist. I'll also share the formatting feature that is built in to %SYSFUNC and introduce the %QSYSFUNC that masks the returned value.
The many faces of HTML
Generating HTML output might be something that you do daily. After all, HTML is now the default format for Display Manager SAS output, and it is one of the available formats for SAS® Enterprise Guide®. In addition, SAS® Studio generates HTML 5.0 output as a default. The many faces of
Efficiency at your fingertips: Keyboard macros and function keys
It is not laziness—it is efficiency!!! Programmers are often called lazy; we even call ourselves lazy. But we are not lazy, we are just being efficient. It makes no sense to type the same code over and over again or use more keystrokes than are absolutely necessary. Keyboard Macros You
Common annotate pitfalls and how to avoid them
The SAS/GRAPH® Annotate Facility is often viewed as a mysterious programming abyss that many SAS users do not wish to dive into, in part because of some not-so-obvious pitfalls that they might experience when using it. I view annotation as a frequently misunderstood and needlessly feared but powerful tool that
What can compression do for you?
Compressing a data set is a process that reduces the number of bytes that are required to represent each observation in a file. You might choose to enable compression to reduce the storage requirements for the file and to lessen the number of I/O operations that are needed to read
Controlling your formats
During my 35 years of using SAS® software, I have found the CNTLIN and CNTLOUT options in the FORMAT procedure to be among the most useful features that I routinely suggest to other SAS users. The CNTLIN option enables you to create user-defined formats from a SAS data set (input
The ODS Destination for PowerPoint Has a New Option
Have you heard? The ODS Destination for PowerPoint Has a New Option It’s true. The ODS destination for PowerPoint now has the STARTPAGE= option, which provides you with greater control and flexibility when creating presentations. Added to the ODS POWERPOINT statement in SAS® 9.4TS1M4, the STARTPAGE= option enables you to
Tips for using the IMPORT procedure to read files that contain delimiters
Reading an external file that contains delimiters (commas, tabs, or other characters such as a pipe character or an exclamation point) is easy when you use the IMPORT procedure. It's easy in that variable names are on row 1, the data starts on row 2, and the first 20 rows
PROC SGPLOT: There’s an ATTRS for that
The SGPLOT procedure (as well as other ODS Graphics procedures) does a great job of creating nice- looking output with very little coding. However, there are times when you want to make adjustments to the output's appearance. For those occasions, we have an ATTRS for that! The statements in PROC
Always save your code when creating a stored compiled macro
The stored compiled macro facility enables you to compile and save your macro definition in a permanent catalog in a library that you specify. The macro is compiled only once. When you call the macro in the current and subsequent SAS® sessions, SAS executes the compiled code from the macro
Selecting the top n% and bottom n% of observations from a data set
SAS® offers several ways that you can find the top n% and bottom n% of data values based on a numeric variable. The RANK procedure with the GROUPS= option is one method. Another method is The UNIVARIATE procedure with the PCTLPTS= option. Because there are several ways to perform this
Using parameters within the macro facility
Have you ever written a macro and wondered if there was an easy way to pass values to the macro? You can by using macro parameters. Macro parameters enable you to pass values into the macro at macro invocation, and set default values for macro variables within the macro definition.
Demystifying and resolving common transcoding problems
Technical Support regularly receives incoming calls from customers who have encountered the following transcoding warning: WARNING: Some character data was lost during transcoding in the data set xxx.xxx. Either the data contains characters that are not representable in the new encoding or truncation occurred during transcoding People are not always
Use SAS to send an email that embeds a graph in the body of the email
When using the SAS® system to email graphics output, a common request is to use SAS to send an email in which the graphics output is embedded in the body of the email. This functionality is not available until the second maintenance release for SAS® 9.4 (TS1M2). If you are
Create accessible ODS results with SAS or "Why you should be running SAS 9.4M4!"
Let’s look at the term “accessible” and how it relates to the SAS world. Accessible output is output that can be read by a screen reader to someone with low or no vision, visualized by someone with low vision or color blindness, or navigated by someone with limited mobility. In