Functions and CALL Routines

CALL SYSTEM Routine

Submits an operating environment command for execution.

Category:	Special
Interaction:	When invoked by the %SYSCALL macro statement, CALL SYSTEM removes quotation marks from its arguments. For more information, see Using CALL Routines and the %SYSCALL Macro Statement.
See:	CALL SYSTEM Routine under Windows UNIX z/OS OpenVMS

Syntax
Arguments
Comparisons
See Also

specifies any of the following: a system command that is enclosed in quotation marks (character string), an expression whose value is a system command, or the name of a character variable whose value is a system command that is executed.

Operating Environment Information: See the SAS documentation for your operating environment for information about what you can specify. [cautionend]

Restriction:

The length of the command cannot be greater than 1024 characters, including trailing blanks.

Comparisons

The behavior of the CALL SYSTEM routine is similar to that of the X command, the X statement, and the SYSTEM function. It is useful in certain situations because it can be conditionally executed, it accepts an expression as an argument, and it is executed at run time.

CALL SYSTEM Routine

Syntax

Arguments