Working in the SAS Windowing Environment

Opening Files in UNIX Environments

The Open dialog box enables you to select files from the host file system. To open this dialog box, select File Open.

Open Dialog Box

[Open Dialog Box]

Description of the Open Dialog Box Options

The following table describes the options found in the Open dialog box.

Options in the Open Dialog Box
Option	Description
Enter directory, filename, or filter	is where you can type in the name of the directory, file, or file filter (file type) that you want to open. The directory shown in the Filter field is the currently selected directory. You can change this directory either by selecting a name from the Page of Directories list or by typing the new name directly into the field. The dialog box displays non-readable directories with a different icon. To display a list of all the files in a directory, enter the asterisk () wildcard in the Filter field or select All Files; as the file type.
Page of Directories	contains the names of the directories specified in the Filter and Page fields.
Files	contains the files in the selected directory that match the filter specified.
Page	enables you to change the directories that are listed in the Page of Directories list. A new page is defined when the number of entries in the Page of Directories list exceeds twice the screen height. To change pages, use the right or left arrows next to the Page field.
File type	enables you to select the type or types of files to be shown in the Files list. You can display a list of possible file filters by selecting the down arrow next to the field. Click on a file filter to select it.
Ignore Case	specifies that both uppercase and lowercase names be included in the display. (If you select All Files; * as the filter, both uppercase and lowercase names are displayed whether you select Ignore Case .)
Include hidden	includes or excludes hidden files and directories from the graphical display.

Specifying the Initial Filter and Directory Using SAS Resources

You can specify the initial filter in the File type field by assigning a value to the SAS.pattern resource. However, the Open dialog box retains its filter between invocations, so the SAS.pattern resource applies only to the first invocation of the Open dialog box. You can also use the SAS.directory resource to specify the directory that you want when you first invoke the Open dialog box.

For more information about specifying SAS resources, see Overview of X Resources.

Using Regular Expressions in Filenames

Everything that you enter into the Open dialog box is treated as a regular expression. When you are opening or saving a file and you want to use a regular expression special character as part of the filename, precede the character with a backslash (\). For example, to write to a file named $Jan, enter \$Jan as the filename.

For more information on regular expressions, refer to UNIX man page 5 for regexp:

man 5 regexp

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