SAS Component Language Dictionary

FSLIST

Displays an external file for browsing

Category:

External File

Syntax
Details
Examples
See Also

Syntax

CALL FSLIST(file<,options>);

file

is the fileref or physical filename of the external file. A physical name must be enclosed in quotation marks.

Type: Character

options

specifies one or more carriage-control options for formatting the display, with multiple options separated by blanks and enclosed in one set of quotation marks:

'CC': Use the host operating system's native carriage-control characters.
'FORTCC': Use FORTRAN-style carriage-control characters.
'NOCC': Treat carriage-control characters as regular text. (This is the default.)

For CC or FORTCC, you can also specify an overprinting control option:

'OVP': Print the current line over the previous line when the overprint code is encountered. The OVP option is valid only if the CC or FORTCC option is also specified. The default is NOOVP.
'NOOVP': Ignore the overprint code and print each line from the file on a separate line of the display.

If you use the FORTCC option, the first column of each line in the external file is not displayed. The character in this column is interpreted as a carriage-control code. Under some operating systems, FORTRAN-style carriage control is the native carriage control. For these systems, the FORTCC and CC options produce the same behavior.

Under some operating systems, the CC option is the default for print files.

Type: Character

Details

The FSLIST routine calls the FSLIST procedure, which opens the FSLIST window to display an external file for interactive browsing. This routine provides a convenient method for examining the information stored in an external file.

For more information about the commands that are available in the FSLIST procedure, see SAS Language Reference: Dictionary.

External files (files maintained by the host operating system rather than by SAS software) can contain various types of information:

data records
output from previous SAS sessions
SAS source statements
carriage-control information.

Examples

Browse an external file to which the fileref MYFILE has previously been assigned. The file contains FORTRAN-style carriage-control characters, and overprinting is allowed.
```
call fslist('myfile','fortcc ovp');
```
Browse the external file named FSLIST.PUB. Double quotation marks surrounding the filename string indicate that a physical filename, not a fileref, is being passed to the FSLIST routine.
```
call fslist('"fslist.pub"');
```

Note: The form of the physical filename depends on the host operating system. [cautionend]