When you code a one-level data set name, i.e. a data set name with no libname specified, you probably expect it to be read or written from/to the WORK library, but that might not be so. Read on…
Subject to the value of the USER= option, one-level da…
One of the other “futures” sessions I attended at SAS Global Forum was The New SAS Programming Language: DS2 with SAS’s Jason Secosky. Jason was at pains to point out that DS2 is not intended as a replacement for the good old DATA step. DS2 is an alter…
My team received what turned out to be an interesting call for help from one of our clients today. We resolved the client’s coding error but it also served as a reminder of a little used feature of BASE SAS, namely the ability to specify director…
This post ends the series of golden oldies. Looking through past conference papers has revealed many interesting nuggets. I was interested to read SAS co-founder John Sall’s paper on PROC MATRIX, the forerunner of SAS/IML. This paper was presented at…
My mini-series of hints and tips from past decades would not be complete without a contribution from the SAS-L mailing list – the 25 years old list server that continues to provide immense value to SAS practitioners worldwide. Joined by the c…
Our mini-series of hints and tips from past decades continues with 1999…
Appearing in the same issue of The Missing Semicolon (TMS) was i) an advertisement for Year 2000 Support (do you remember “Y2K”?), and ii) an article entitled “Decoding the _TY…
Continuing my mini-series of hints and tips from previous decades, here’s a paper from my first SAS Users Group International (SUGI) conference. The 18th SUGI (predecessor to today’s SAS Global Forum (SGF)) was held in 1993 in New York. Helen and Ginge…
Whilst the capabilities of SAS software increase markedly from release to release, the core capabilities remain the same. And that means that many hints and tips from years gone by are still valid today. Starting today I’m running a mini-series of tips…