Referring to a SAS Data Set

The USE, EDIT, and CREATE statements take as their first operand the data set name. This name can have either one or two levels. If it is a two-level name, the first level refers to the name of the SAS data library; the second name is the data set name. If the libref is WORK, the data set is stored in a directory for temporary data sets; these are automatically deleted at the end of the session. Other librefs are associated with SAS data libraries by using the LIBNAME statement.

If you specify only a single name, then IML supplies a default libref. At the beginning of an IML session, the default libref is SASUSER if SASUSER is defined as a libref or WORK otherwise. You can reset the default libref by using the RESET DEFLIB statement. If you want to create a permanent SAS data set, you must specify a two-level name by using the RESET DEFLIB statement (see the chapter on SAS files in SAS Language Reference: Concepts for more information about permanent SAS data sets):