SAS 9.4 Language Reference, 6th Edition

Chapter 39

External Files

Definition of External Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 761

Referencing External Files Directly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 762

Referencing External Files Indirectly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 762

Referencing Many External Files Efficiently . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 763

Referencing External Files with Other Access Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 764

Working with External Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 766

Reading External Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 766

Writing to External Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 766

Processing External Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 766

Definition of External Files

external files

are files that are managed and maintained by your operating system, not by SAS.

They contain data or text or are files in which you want to store data or text. They

can also be SAS catalogs or output devices. Every SAS job creates at least one

external file, the SAS log. Most SAS jobs create external files in the form of

procedure output or output created by a DATA step.

External files used in a SAS session can store input for your SAS job as:

• records of raw data that you want to use as input to a DATA step

• SAS programming statements that you want to submit to the system for

execution

External files can also store output from your SAS job as:

• a SAS log (a record of your SAS job).

• a report written by a DATA step.

• procedure output created by SAS procedures, including regular list output, and,

beginning in Version 7, HTML and PostScript output from the Output Delivery

System (ODS).

The PRINTTO procedure also enables you to direct procedure output to an external

file. For more information, see “PRINTTO Procedure” in Base SAS Procedures

Guide. See Chapter 9, “SAS Output,” on page 155 for more information about ODS.

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