SAS System Options under Windows

SORTCUTP System Option: Windows

Specifies the number of bytes 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

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

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

n | nK | nM | nG: specifies the number of bytes in multiples of 1; 1,024 (kilobytes); 1,048,576 (megabytes); and 1,073,741,824 (gigabytes), respectively. You can specify decimal values for the number of kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes. For example, a value of 8 specifies 8 bytes, a value of .782k specifies 801 bytes, and a value of 3m specifies 3,145,728 bytes.
hexX: specifies the number of bytes 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 bytes.
MIN: specifies 0 bytes.
MAX: specifies 2,147,483,647 bytes.

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 SORTCUTP and SORTCUT 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 SORTCUTP and SORTCUT 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.

The following equation computes the number of bytes to be sorted:

number of bytes= ((length-of-obs) + (length-of-all-keys)) * number-of-obs