Options for Commands, Statements, and Procedures for NLS

CORRECTENCODING= Option

Explicitly changes the encoding attribute of a SAS file to match the encoding of the data in the SAS file.

Valid in:

MODIFY statement of the DATASETS procedure

Syntax
Options
Example
	Using the CORRECTENCODING= Option to Resolve a SAS Session Encoding and a SAS File Encoding

Syntax

MODIFY SAS file </<CORRECTENCODING=encoding-value>> ;

Options

</ <CORRECTENCODING=encoding-value> >

enables you to change the encoding indicator, which is recorded in the file's descriptor information, in order to match the actual encoding of the file's data. You cannot use this option in parenthesis after the name of each SAS file; you must specify CORRECTENCODING= after the forward slash. For example:

modify mydata / correctencoding=latin2;

For a list of valid encoding values for transcoding, see SBCS, DBCS, and Unicode Encoding Values for Transcoding Data.

Restriction:

CORRECTENCODING= can be used only when the SAS file uses the default base engine, which is V9 in SAS 9.

Example

Example 1: Using the CORRECTENCODING= Option to Resolve a SAS Session Encoding and a SAS File Encoding

A file's encoding indicator can be different from the data's encoding. For example, a SAS file that was created before SAS 9 has no encoding indicator stored on the file. If such a SAS file that has no recorded encoding is opened in a SAS 9 session, SAS assigns the encoding of the current session. For example, if the encoding of the data is Danish EBCDIC, but the encoding for the current session is Western Wlatin1, then the actual encoding of the file's data and the encoding indicator that is stored in the file's descriptor information do not match. When this action occurs, the data does not transcode correctly and could result in unreadable output. The following MODIFY statement would resolve the problem by explicitly assigning an EDCDIC encoding:

Note: CEDA creates a read-only copy. You need to copy the data with PROC COPY or a DATA step to transcode the data permanently. [cautionend]

proc datasets library=myfiles;
   modify olddata / correctencoding=ebcdic1142;
quit;

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