SCL Lists

Debugging SCL Lists

SCL provides a List Diagnostic Utility (or list analyzer), which reports any SCL lists that are not freed at the appropriate time in a program. SCL lists that are not deleted when they are no longer needed can waste significant amounts of memory. The list analyzer highlights every statement in an SCL program that creates an SCL list that is not deleted directly or indirectly by the program.

To use the list analyzer, issue the command SCLPROF LIST ON from any SAS window to start the data collection phase. Then invoke the window associated with the program that you want to test. When you return to the window from which you issued the SCLPROF LIST ON command, issue the command SCLPROF LIST OFF to end the data collection phase. The data collected during this phase is stored in the SAS table WORK.SCLTRAC1. If you end the task from which you started the data collection phase, the data collection phase ends.

Note: To avoid collecting lists that are not deleted until the end of the task or application, begin the data collection phase on the second invocation of the window that you are testing. [cautionend]

As soon as the data collection phase ends, the interactive data presentation phase begins. From the data presentation phase, you can save the data by selecting Save As from the File menu. To view the stored data, issue the command SCLPROF LIST DATA=analysis-data-set. The interactive presentation phase opens two windows:

The SUMMARY window displays summary statistics of the list analysis.
The List Diagnostic Utility window lists the catalog entries containing SCL programs that created lists that were not deleted during the analysis.

If warnings were generated during the analysis, a third window opens to display the warning messages.

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