System Options under UNIX

SORTCUTP System Option: UNIX

Specifies the number of bytes that SAS sorts; if the number of bytes in the data set is greater than the specified number, the host sort program sorts the remaining data set.

Default:	0
Valid in:	configuration file, SAS invocation, OPTIONS statement, SASV9_OPTIONS environment variable
Category:	Sort: Procedure options
PROC OPTIONS GROUP=	SORT
UNIX specifics:	all

Syntax
Details
See Also

Syntax

-SORTCUTP n | nK | nM | nG | hexX | MIN | MAX

SORTCUTP=n | nK | nM | nG | hexX | MIN | MAX

n | nK | nM | nG: specifies the number of bytes in multiples of 1 (bytes); 1,024 (kilobytes); 1,048,576 (megabytes); or 1,073,741,824 (gigabytes). You can specify decimal values for the number of kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes. For example, a value of 8 specifies 8 bytes, a value of .782k specifies 801 bytes, and a value of 3m specifies 3,145,728 bytes.
hexX: specifies the number of bytes as a hexadecimal value. You must specify the value beginning with a number (0-9), followed by hexadecimal characters (0-9, A-F), and then followed by an X. For example, the value 2dx specifies 45 bytes.
MIN: specifies 0 bytes.
MAX: specifies 9,007,199,254,740,992 bytes.

Details

When you specify SORTPGM=BEST, SAS uses the value of the SORTCUT and SORTCUTP options to determine whether to use the host sort or the SAS sort. If the data set to be sorted is larger than the number of bytes (or kilobytes or megabytes) that you specify with SORTCUTP, the host sort will be used instead of the SAS sort. The value you specify must be less than or equal to 2,147,483,647 bytes. If both SORTCUT and SORTCUTP are either not defined or are set to 0, the SAS sort is used. If you specify both options and either condition is true, SAS chooses the host sort.

The following equation computes the number of bytes to be sorted:

number-of-bytes= ((length-of-obs)+(length-of-all-keys))
*number-of-obs