System Options under OpenVMS

SORTPGM= System Option: OpenVMS

Specifies whether SAS sorts using use the SAS sort utility or the host sort utility.

Default:	BEST
Valid in:	configuration file, SAS invocation, OPTIONS statement, SAS System Options window, VMS_SAS_OPTIONS DCL symbol
Category:	Sort: Procedure options
PROC OPTIONS GROUP=	SORT
OpenVMS specifics:	valid values for sort utility; syntax

Syntax
Details
See Also

Syntax

SORTPGM=BEST | HOST | SAS

BEST: specifies the sort utility that is best suited for the data. This is the default.
HOST: specifies the host sort utility that is available under OpenVMS. The host sort utility might be more suitable than the sort utility supplied by SAS for data sets that contain many observations.
SAS: specifies the sort utility to be supplied by the SAS, which is more efficient for sorting small files than invoking the host sort utility.

Details

The SORTPGM= system option specifies the name of the system sort utility to be invoked by SAS.

Under OpenVMS, if SORTPGM=BEST and the data set to be sorted contains 50,000 observations or fewer, the SAS sort is used; otherwise, the Host sort is used. The informational message that describes which sort was used when SORTPGM=BEST is suppressed unless the value of the MSGLEVEL= system option is I (informational).

Note: An alternate host sort utility, Hypersort V04-003, is also available. For more information about this version of Hypersort, contact Hewlett-Packard. For information about enabling the Hypersort utility, see the OpenVMS Help topic sort. After you enable this sort utility on your system, you can use SORTPGM=HOST to have SAS invoke Hypersort. If you have set SORTPGM=HOST and MSGLEVEL=I, and you have enabled the Hypersort utility, when the SORT procedure is used, the following informational message displays in the log:

NOTE: HOST-HYPER sort was used.

[cautionend]