The Default Template Stores and the Template Search Path

Compiled templates are stored in a template store, which is a type of item store. (An item store is a special type of SAS file.) You can see the list of template stores by submitting the following statement:

ods path show;

The results are as follows:

   Current ODS PATH list is:

   1. SASUSER.TEMPLAT(UPDATE)
   2. SASHELP.TMPLMST(READ)

These results show that the default template search path consists of SASUSER.Templat followed by SASHELP.Tmplmst. You can add template stores that you create or change the order in which the template stores are searched. This is discussed in detail in the sections Saving Customized Templates, Using Customized Templates, and Reverting to the Default Templates.

This section discusses the default template stores that you use when you have not modified the template search path with the ODS PATH statement. By default, templates that you write are stored in SASUSER.Templat. If you stored a modified template in SASUSER.Templat, ODS finds and uses your modified template. Otherwise, ODS finds the templates it provides in SASHELP.Tmplmst. You can see a list of all of the templates that you have modified as follows:

proc template;
   list / store=sasuser.templat;
run;

You can delete any template that you modified (so that ODS finds the default SAS template) by specifying it in a DELETE statement, as in the following statement:

proc template;
   delete Stat.REG.Graphics.ResidualPlot;
run;

ODS never deletes a template in SASHELP.Tmplmst, so you can safely run the preceding step, even if the template you specify does not exist in SASUSER.Templat. You can run the following step to delete the entire SASUSER.Templat template store of customized templates so that ODS uses only the SAS supplied templates:

ods path sashelp.tmplmst(read);
proc datasets library=sasuser nolist;
   delete templat(memtype=itemstor);
run;
ods path sasuser.templat(update) sashelp.tmplmst(read);

It is good practice to delete templates that you have customized when you are done with them, so that they are not unexpectedly used later. See the section Reverting to the Default Templates for more information.