SPOOL System Option

Specifies whether SAS statements are written to a utility data set in the Work library.

Valid in:	Configuration file, SAS invocation, OPTIONS statement, SAS System Options window
Category:	Input control: Data processing
PROC OPTIONS GROUP=	INPUTCONTROL
Note:	This option can be restricted by a site administrator. For more information, see Restricted Options.

Syntax

Example

Syntax

SPOOL | NOSPOOL

Syntax Description

SPOOL: specifies that SAS write statements to a utility data set in the Work library for later use by a %INCLUDE or %LIST statement, or by the RECALL command, within a windowing environment.

NOSPOOL: specifies that SAS does not write statements to a utility data set. Specifying NOSPOOL accelerates execution time, but you cannot use the %INCLUDE and %LIST statements to resubmit SAS statements that were executed earlier in the session.

Example

Specifying SPOOL is especially helpful in interactive line mode because you can resubmit a line or lines of code by referring to the line numbers. Here is an example of code including line numbers:

00001  data test;
00002     input w x y z;
00003     datalines;
00004  411.365 101.945 323.782 512.398
00005  ;

If SPOOL is in effect, you can resubmit line number 1 by submitting this statement:

%inc 1;

You can also resubmit a range of lines by placing a colon (:) or dash (-) between the line numbers. For example, these statements resubmit lines 1 through 3 and 4 through 5 of the above example:

%inc 1:3;
%inc 4-5;