When creating a compressed SAS data set from an empty hash object with the
OUTPUT method, the following error can occur:

  ERROR: An error has occurred during instance method OM_OUTPUT(505)
         of "DATASTEP.HASH".

This error occurs only if the overhead to compress the data would
increase the size of the data.  The following note is also issued:

  NOTE: Compression was disabled for data set WORK.MYHASH
        because compression overhead would increase the size
        of the data set.

For related information, please refer to SAS Notes  #005687 
and  #008632 .

This problem is corrected in SAS 9.2

Operating System and Release Information

%*--  create empty / non-empty test data.  ; 
data WORK.hash1; 
  AVar1 = 42; 
run; 
data WORK.hash0; 
  set WORK.hash1(obs=0); 
run; 

%*--  fix it... set to NO, break it with YES  ; 
option compress=YES; 

%*--  do something.  ; 
data _null_; 
  set WORK.hash1 end=last; 
  call missing (AVar1); 
  if _n_ eq 1 then do; 
    dcl hash hDUMMY (dataset: 'WORK.hash0'); 
    hDUMMY.DefineKey ('AVar1'); 
    hDUMMY.DefineData ('AVar1'); 
    hDUMMY.DefineDone(); 
  end; 
  if last then do; 
    put 'NOTE: ***** PUTTING *****'; 
    hDUMMY.output (dataset: 'WORK.testSet'); 
  end; 
run;