The following table lists recent SAS^® releases and the versions of R that each supports:

Compatibility with R releases

To date, five releases of R have been incompatible with prior SAS releases:

• R 2.12.0, which introduced 64-bit R, changed the locations of certain libraries. To use R 2.12.0 or later, you must use SAS^® 9.3M0 (TS1M0) or later.
• R 3.0.0 changed certain aspects of the external API to R. To use R 3.0.0 or later, you must use SAS^® 9.4M0 (TS1M0) or later.
• R 3.0.2 changed an internal detail that SAS was using. To use R 3.0.2 or later, you must use SAS^® 9.4M1 (TS1M1) or later.
• R 3.3.0 broke compatibility with SAS/IML^® 14.1 (SAS^® 9.4M3) and earlier releases on Microsoft Windows only. The interface works on Linux. R 3.3.0 requires Red Hat Linux (RHEL) 7.1, so SAS customers who run an older Linux release might need to upgrade the operating system before they can compile R 3.3.0.
• R 4.0 broke compatibility with all SAS releases. When you try to run R from SAS/IML, you might get error messages that include "ERROR: The final R statement is incomplete" and "ERROR: SAS is unable to transcode character data to the R encoding." You can download a hot fix that resolves the issue for SAS 9.4 M5, M6, and M7 (SAS Note 67110). The problem is fixed in SAS^® 9.4M8 (TS1M8).

The following is an error message that might occur because of incompatible SAS and R versions:

ERROR: An installed version of R could not be found.

However, this message can also occur for other reasons.

SAS Institute ensures that each SAS release supports as many previous R releases as possible. However, after a version of SAS is released, it is impossible to ensure compatibility with later versions of R. If the interface to R changes, you will need to use a compatible version of R until the next release of SAS can support the change. In summary:

• Prior to SAS 9.4, use R 2.15.x or earlier.
• To access R 3.0.1, use SAS/IML^® 12.3 (in SAS 9.4M0) or later.
• To access R 3.0.2, use SAS/IML^® 13.1 (in SAS 9.4M1) or later.

Here is information regarding 32-bit and 64-bit versions of SAS and R:

• SAS running on a 32-bit edition of Windows requires the use of a 32-bit edition of R.
• SAS running on a 64-bit edition of Windows can be used with either a 32-bit or a 64-bit edition of R.

Operating System and Release Information