Opening and Creating Programs

You can open SAS programs from the Folders section of the navigation pane. To open a program, expand the appropriate folder and double-click the program that you want to open, or drag it into the work area. The program opens in a new tab in the work area.

You can create a new SAS program from the Folders section of the navigation pane. To create a new program, click and select SAS Program. A program window appears in a new tab in the work area.

After you have written your program, you can run it by clicking . If there are no errors, the results open automatically. If there are errors, the Log tab opens by default. You can expand the Errors, Warnings, and Notes sections to view the messages. When you click on a message, SAS Studio highlights it for you in the log so that you can see exactly where the message occurs in the log.

The code editor displays brief SAS syntax documentation as you write and edit your programs. You can display the Help in the following ways:

The SAS Product Documentation provides more comprehensive usage information about the SAS language, but the syntax help in the code editor can get you started with a hint about the syntax or a brief description of the keyword. You can get additional help by clicking links in the syntax help window as follows:

From the Libraries section of the navigation pane, you can use a drag-and-drop operation to move table names and column names into the SAS code. For example, you can move the Sashelp.Cars table into the DATA option for the PRINT procedure. When you release the mouse, the fully qualified name for the table appears in your code.

You can edit the code that is generated automatically when you run a task and then run it with your modifications. When you edit the code, SAS Studio opens it in a separate program window. The code is no longer associated with the original task.

To edit a program generated by a task:

A SAS Program Package is a file that contains a snapshot of a SAS program along with its log and HTML results. You can create a program package from code that you have written as well as code that is automatically generated when you run a task. When you open a program package in SAS Studio, you can access the code as well as the log and results without running the program again. If you make changes to the code and rerun it, the package is not automatically updated. You must save the package again to keep the changes.

To create a program package file, open the code that you want to use and click . Specify the file location and name, and then select SAS Program Package as the Save as type option.

You can create a summary page for code that you have written as well as code that is automatically generated when you run a task. The Program Summary page is an HTML file that opens in a separate browser tab and includes information about the program execution, the complete SAS source code, the complete SAS log, and the results. To view the Program Summary page for a program, click .

You can also save a Program Summary file to a folder that you specify by clicking and selecting SAS Program Summary as the Save as type option. The Program Summary is saved as an HTML file.

Macro variables can be used to add information that is obtained when a program or task is run, such as the name and version number of the application. You can reference these items within code, titles, or footnotes by preceding them with "&".

For example, you can use macros in a footnote like the following:

Generated with &_CLIENTAPP &_CLIENTAPPVERSION

SAS Studio maintains a log with entries for each time you run a program or task. You can use this log, or submission history, to access prior versions of your submitted code. To view your submission history, click the Code tab in your program or task window. On the toolbar, click and select the version that you want to open. The prior version of the program opens in a new window from which you can copy and paste the code as needed.

You can use the code editor to make your programs easier to read by automatically formatting your code. When you automatically format your code, line breaks are added, and each line is correctly indented according to its nesting level. To format the code in the code editor, click .

For example, the following code is difficult to read because it lacks indention and logical line breaks:

data topn;
length rank 8; label rank="Rank";
set topn; by &category descending &measure;
if first.&category then rank=0; rank+1;
if rank le &n then output;
run;

After you use the automatic code-formatting feature, the program looks like this:

data topn;
    length rank 8;
    label rank="Rank";
    set topn;
    by &category descending &measure;

    if first.&category then
        rank=0;
    rank+1;

    if rank le &n then
        output;
run;

Some SAS procedures are interactive, which means they remain active until you submit a QUIT statement, or until you submit a new PROC or DATA step. In SAS Studio, you can use the code editor to run these procedures, as well as other SAS procedures, in interactive mode.

By using interactive mode, you can run selected lines of code from your SAS program and use the results to determine your next steps. For example, the OPTMODEL procedure in SAS/OR enables you to model and solve mathematical programming models. By running this procedure interactively, you can quickly check results for parts of the program and determine whether you need to make any modifications without running the entire program.

To run a program in interactive mode, click on the toolbar. To turn off interactive mode, click again. If you change modes while a program is open, the log and results for that program are cleared. You can also clear the log and results manually by clicking on the appropriate toolbar.

When you run a program in interactive mode, SAS Studio does not add any automatically generated code, such as ODS and %LET statements, to your program. In addition, results are generated only in HTML. In interactive mode, the log and results are appended to the existing log and results. Previously submitted code remains active until you terminate it.

For example, suppose you have the following program:

proc sql;
  select * from sashelp.cars;
  
  select * from sashelp.class;
  quit;

In noninteractive mode, if you select the first two lines of code and submit them, the code runs successfully. If you then select the last two lines of code and submit them, the code fails because the PROC SQL statement is missing.

If you switch to interactive mode and follow the same steps, the last two lines of code run successfully because the PROC SQL statement is still active.