SAS System Options under Windows

SORTCUT System Option: Windows

Specifies the number of observations above which SyncSort is used instead of the SAS sort program.

Default:	0
Valid in:	configuration file, SAS invocation, OPTIONS statement, SAS System Options window
Category:	Sort: Procedure options
PROC OPTIONS GROUP=	SORT
Windows specifics:	all

Syntax
Details
See Also

Syntax

-SORTCUT n | nK | nM | nG | hexX | MIN | MAX

SORTCUT=n | nK | nM | nG | hexX | MIN | MAX

n | nK | nM | nG: specifies the number of observations in multiples of 1 (n); 1,024 (nK); 1,048,576 (nM); and 1,073,741,824 (nG), respectively. You can specify decimal values for n when it is used to specify a K, M, or G value. For example, a value of 8 specifies 8 observations, a value of .782k specifies 801 observations, and a value of 3m specifies 3,145,728 observations.
hexX: specifies the number of observations as a hexadecimal value. You must specify the value beginning with a number (0-9), followed by an X. For example, the value 2dx specifies 45 observations.
MIN: specifies 0 observations.
MAX: specifies 2,147,483,647 observations.

Details

When you specify SORTPGM=BEST and SAS determines that the database sort utility is not to be used, SAS uses the value of the SORTCUT and SORTCUTP options to determine whether to use SyncSort or the SAS sort. If the data set to be sorted is larger than the number of bytes (or kilobytes or megabytes) that you specify with SORTCUTP, SyncSort is used instead of the SAS sort program. The value that you specify must be less than or equal to 2,147,483,647 bytes. If both SORTCUT and SORTCUTP are either not defined or are set to 0, the SAS sort is used. If you specify both options and either condition is true, SAS uses SyncSort.