PROC CONTENTS: Identifying the Base SAS Engine Used to Create a SAS File

You can use the CONTENTS procedure on all operating environments that use SAS 6 and later to identify the Base SAS engine that was used to create a SAS file.

Note: Because z/OS operating environments do not use filename extensions, you must use PROC CONTENTS in order to identify the Base SAS engine that was used to create SAS files.

Here is an example of using PROC CONTENTS on a data set in the z/OS environment:

proc contents data=test.records;
run;

Here is an excerpt of the output:

    The SAS System
    The CONTENTS Procedure
Data Set Name: TEST.RECORDS
Member Type:   DATA
Engine:        V9

The output shows that the data set RECORDS is a member of type DATA, and that it was created with the V9 engine.

You can also use PROC CONTENTS to find out whether a data set's operating environment format is foreign or native to the accessing operating environment. For more information, see Identifying the Format of a SAS File .