The following messages are written to the SAS^® log when you run out of memory when adding keys and associated data items to a hash object:

   FATAL: Insufficient memory to execute data step program. Aborted
          during the EXECUTION phase.
   NOTE: The SAS System stopped processing this step because of
         insufficient memory.

In some cases, these messages might be generated even though there is still memory available. These types of failures can occur on machines which have an XMRLMEM value which will overflow a 4-byte integer. This causes an excessively large memory allocation request which results in the inaccurate "out of memory" condition.
The code below illustrates how to obtain the value of XMRLMEM.

   data _null_;
     amt = getoption('xmrlmem');
     put amt=;
   run;

If the value of Amt is 2,147,483,647 or greater then you might be getting the insufficient memory error incorrectly. This problem is fixed in SAS 9.1.3 Service Pack 4.

Also beginning with SP4, when the system option MSGLEVEL=I is specified, a message is written to the SAS log reporting the number of items added to the hash object when the memory shortage occurs.

Operating System and Release Information