1. Fall 2017 Questions and Answers (Q&A)
OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Fall 2017 Questions and Answers (Q&A)
Yves DeGuire
Statistics Canada
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2. OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Question #1 How Can I Restore my SAS Environment after a Crash or On Demand?
After a crash:
Use the Checkpoint/Restart facility
On-Demand:
Use the PRESENV facility
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3. The Checkpoint/Restart Facility
OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
The Checkpoint/Restart Facility
The Checkpoint/restart facility allows you to resubmit batch SAS programs that did not complete.
2 modes:
Checkpoint Mode: SAS records info about the DATA and PROC steps in a Checkpoint library.
Restart Mode: SAS reads the checkpoint library to determine which steps completed successfully. The program resumes at the step that didn’t complete.
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4. Setting Up Your Program
OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Setting Up Your Program
Add the statement CHECKPOINT EXECUTE_ALWAYS immediately before a step that you want to ALWAYS re-run.
Add a LIBNAME statement that defines the checkpoint-restart library
Add labels if label sections will be used for Checkpoint/Restart
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5. What about the Work Library?
OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
What about the Work Library?
Must be preserved if the program does not complete with the following options:
NOWORKTERM saves the Work library when SAS ends.
NOWORKINIT does not initialize the Work library when SAS starts.
CHKPTCLEAN specifies whether to erase files in the Work library and delete the Work library if the batch program runs successfully.
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6. Enable Checkpoint/Restart
OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Enable Checkpoint/Restart
Options for DATA and PROC steps:
STEPCHKPT enables checkpoint mode
STEPRESTART enables restart mode
STEPCHKPTLIB identifies a user-specified checkpoint-restart library
Options for labeled sections:
LABELCHKPT enables checkpoint mode
LABELRESTART enables restart mode
LABELCHKPTLIB identifies a user-specified checkpoint-restart library
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7. OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Demos
Checkpoint/Restart for DATA and PROC steps Checkpoint/Restart for labeled sections
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8. OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
The PRESENV Facility
Introduced as part of SAS 9.4
Gives the user the ability to save most global options (including titles and footnotes), macros, macro variables, formats, and data between SAS sessions
The facility requires that:
the PRESENV option be turned on to start saving the environment
PROC PRESENV be called in order to store the saved environment and the temp data
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9. OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
The PRESENV Option
This OPTION saves the following items:
Global SAS statements (for example, the FILENAME, LIBNAME, TITLE, and FOOTNOTE statements)
Compiled macros in the SAS Work library
Temporary formats in the SAS Work library
Option settings in your session
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10. OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
PROC PRESENV
PROC PRESENV PERMDIR=OUTDATA
SASCODE=OUTCODE;
PERMDIR= specifies a libref where all of the Work data sets, catalogs, and macros are written.
SASCODE= specifies a fileref where the SAS program that contains all of the code that is necessary to restore the environment will be stored.
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11. OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Demo
PRESENV Demo
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12. OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Question #2 When I get an error in code generated by a macro, is there a way that I can get a line number that points directly to the location of the error?
Difficult because:
Line and column numbers in macro code refers to blocks and character offset!!!
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13. Line and Column References in Macros

14. Demacrofied your Code with the MPRINT option
OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Demacrofied your Code with the MPRINT option
The MPRINT option will output the code generated by a macro to the log.
If a fileref called MPRINT is also defined along with the MFILE option, the generated code will also be written out to a file which can be run on its own!
filename mprint 'c:\temp\debug.sas';
/* Need to empty the file because mprint uses mod */
data _null_;
file mprint;
run;
options mprint mfile;
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15. OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Demo
MPRINT Demo
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16. OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Question #3 The EG Debugger is really nice. But if we have to make do without it, can you give some tricks to help us debug our programs?
‘Good old’ debugging techniques often rely on the PUT statement. And it is more powerful that you may think!!!
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17. The PUT Statement on Steroids!
OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
The PUT Statement on Steroids!
Tip
Statement
Results
in the log
Name/value
pair
put
vara=;
vara=
Values of
arrays
put (x
[*])
(=);
x1=1 x2=4 x3=9 x4=16 x5=25
Name/value
pair
with a
format
put (
vara )
(=6.2);
vara=78.33
Name/value pair on
separate
line
put
(vara
varb )
(=/);
vara= =
Use PUTLOG
statement
putlog
vara =;
vara=
All name -
value pairs
put _ALL_;
vara=
varb =
_ERROR_=0
_N_=1
Name/value
pair of a
macro variable
%put &=
SYSDATE ;
SYSDATE=23NOV17
All
name
/value pairs of
macros variables
%put _USER_;
GLOBAL MACVAR 98
%put _ALL_;
GLOBAL ….
AUTOMATIC ….
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18. OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
My Last Q&A 
Number of Questions
Year
Spring
Fall
2005 4 6
2006 9 ?
2007 5
2008 14
2009 11
2010 12
2011 8
2012 7
2013 10
2014
2015
2016
2017 3
Total
71+
69+
Over 140 questions answered!
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19. OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
My Top 10 Q&A
What
When
Why 1
Hide
passwords in
your
Programs
Spring
2005
Must
know 2
Minimize
space
used
by a SAS
dataset
Spring
2007
Must know 3
Scheduling
with EG
Fall
2008
Useful 4
Maintain
multiple versions of
your
dataset
Spring
2009
Useful 5
Replace
missing
values
with
PROC STDSIZE
Fall
2011
Useful 6
DATA
step
vs PROC SQL
Spring
2012
Must know 7
PROC Document
Spring
2013
Useful
Last begin with our first step 8
How to
handle
very
large
numbers
Fall
2015
Cool!!! 9
Multi -
threading
with
PROC DS2
Fall
2016
Useful 10
Call R
from
SAS
Spring
2017
Useful
/Must know
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20. OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Famous Last Word!
JUST ANOTHER TOOL in the TOOLBOX!
You only need to provide basic PivotTables and the users will quickly learn to exploit them on their own.
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21. OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Questions / Comments
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Yves DeGuire
System Engineering Division
Statistics Canada
(613)
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22. OASUS Spring or Fall YYYY
Thursday, November 15, 2018
References
Dhillon, Rupinder. (2009) What’s new in BASE SAS 9.2: Checkpoint/Restart
Fredlund, Keith., Wai, Thinzar. (2016) Painless Extraction: Options and Macros with PROC PRESENV
Gilsen, Bruce. (2014) Debugging SAS ® code in a macro
Horwitz, Lisa. (2017) A Long-Time SAS® Programmer Learns New Tricks
Russel, Kevin., Tyndall, Russ.(2010) SAS® System Options: The True Heroes of Macro Debugging
Sherman, Paul D. () SAS/MACRO® NOTES: Lines and Columns in the Log
Squillace , Jan. (2013) Flexibility by Design: A Look at New and Updated System Options in SAS® 9.4
Wicklin, Rick. (2017) PUT it there! Six tips for using PUT and %PUT statements in SAS5By on The DO Loop January 16, 2017
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