A Poor/Rich SAS® User's Proc Export - Toronto Area SAS Society

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Presenter: Arthur Tabachneck

A Poor/Rich SAS® User's Proc Export

Art holds a PhD from Michigan State University, has been a SAS user since 1974, is president of the Toronto Area SAS Society and has received such recognitions as the SAS Customer Value Award (2009), SAS-L Hall of Fame (2011), SAS Circle of Excellence (2012) and, in 2013, was recognized as being the first SAS Discussion Forum participant to be awarded more than 10,000 points

Randy Herbison Rockville, MD

Arthur Tabachneck Thornhill, ON Canada

Tom Abernathy New York, NY

Matt Kastin Penn Valley, PA

How many of you are able to export SAS

datasets to Excel using PROC EXPORT?

Question

Would you like to automate the process to be a

point-and-click menu option?

If your answer was "YES"

Would you like to be able to export SAS datasets

to Excel, without requiring PROC EXPORT, and

automate the process to be a point-and-click

menu option?

Regardless of whether your answer was "YES or "NO"

and, of course, in both cases:

in ways that appear to accomplish

the tasks almost automagically

and suppose that

you may only have base SAS

but, regardless,

you may or may not be a SAS guru

you’d really like to impress the people you

work with and/or make SAS easier to use

what the solutions look like

Right click on a dataset name

in the SAS Explorer window

To run PROC EXPORT – select the desired Action (i.e., press hot key (E) or point and left-click)

to run PROC EXPORT – part 2 – Export to Excel

There is no part 2! The workbook would already have been created!

to run Export to Clipboard

Right click on a dataset name

in the SAS Explorer window

To run Export to Clipboard – select the desired Action (i.e., press hot key (X) or point and left-click)

the solution – part 2 – for Export to Clipboard

Open Excel 1

the solution – part 2 – for Export to Clipboard

Open Excel – Press Ctrl-V (Paste) 1 2

the method also works with a formatted template

Open Excel Template – Press Ctrl-V (Paste)

1 2

such capabilities are only moments away with

the methods described in this presentation

how to do either/both

Left-click anywhere in the SAS Explorer Window


Left-click on Tools, move your mouse to Options→Explorer


Left-click on Members


Then double left-click on Table


left-click on Add and an Add Action screen will appear


Type the text you want to add to the menu

&Export to Excel

Action

&Export to Excel

It will appear on the menu as: Export to Excel

how to create the Export to Excel option

Left click in the Action Command box


&Export to Excel

Then type the action command you want SAS to apply

Action Command gsubmit '%%let filepath=%%sysfunc(pathname(%8b)); %%let filenm=%s; PROC EXPORT DATA=%8b.%s OUTFILE= "&filepath.\&filenm..xlsx" DBMS=XLSX REPLACE;RUN;';

gsubmit '%%let filepath=%%sysfunc(p


&Export to Excel

The action command

gsubmit ' %%let filepath=%%sysfunc(pathname(%8b)); %%let filenm=%s; PROC EXPORT DATA=%8b.%s OUTFILE= "&filepath.\&filenm..xlsx" DBMS=XLSX REPLACE; RUN; ';


The action command



create macro variable containing

full path of the dataset's libname

%% %% %8b

The action command



create macro variable containing

dataset's filename

%s

The action command



libname

%8b

filename

%s

Click on OK to exit the Add Action screen


gsubmit '%%let filepath=%%sysfunc(p

&Export to Excel

Click on OK to exit the Table Options screen


then, whenever you right-click on a file and select the option (i.e., press hot key (E) or point and left-click)

the Excel workbook will be automagically created


E&xport to Clipboard

Action


It will appear on the menu as: Export to Clipboard

how to create the Export to Clipboard option




Then type the action command you want SAS to apply

Action Command gsub 'proc transpose data=%8b.%s(obs=0);var _all_;proc sql noprint;select _name_ into :_ separated by " " from &syslast;drop table &syslast;filename c clipbrd;data _null_;file c dsd dlm=" "; set %8b.%s;if _n_=1 then put "&_";put(_all_)(:);run;filename c;';

gsub ‘proc transpose data=%8b.%s(ob



Art Carpenter would be proud (?) of us

However, it wasn't for job security The action command will only accept 255 characters

(the characters shown in red weren't needed)

gsubmit 'proc transpose data=%8b.%s (obs=0); var _all_; run; proc sql noprint; select _name_ into :_names separated by " " from &syslast; drop table &syslast; quit; filename clippy clipbrd; data _null_; file clippy dsd dlm=" "; set %8b.%s; if _n_=1 then put "&_names"; put(_all_)(:); run; filename clippy clear;';




Explanation

1. gsub is an acceptable abbreviation for gsubmit

2. gsub(mit) will submit all of the text that appears between the two single quotation marks




Explanation

1. Proc Transpose is used to create a file containing _all_ variable names

2. Data file is declared by specifying %8b and %s

3. Obs is set to 0 so no data will be read

4. No out option is used so SAS will assign a proc generated filename




Explanation

1. Proc SQL is used to create a tab delimited macro variable, called _, containing the variable names

2. The tab character was placed in the code by typing Alt 09 thus only using 1 character

3. By using &syslast, the file created by Proc Transpose is used as the from file

4. &syslast is deleted using a drop table statement

5. SQL will automatically quit at next boundary




Explanation

1. filename c is declared using clipbrd access method

2. c is declared as the file to write to using the dsd option and the tab character was declared as the dlm by typing Alt 09 thus only using 1 character

3. The data file is set using %8b (the libname) and %s (the filename)

4. when _n_ equals 1 the tab-delimited variable names (in macro variable &_) are written to c

5. the data is written to c using a put statement







then, whenever you right-click on a file and select the option (i.e., press hot key (X) or point and left-click)

You can paste the file (Ctrl-V) into a workbook

notes

Our paper describes two methods for getting around the 255 character limitation, one by using a macro, and another by creating a function with Proc FCMP. You could also %include a file or submit SAS/AF code

SAS Explorer comes with a built-in action called Copy Contents to Clipboard, but it creates an HTML file, contains some possibly undesired headers, shading and borders and runs 138.67 times slower than the methods we've proposed

We selected the first method because it doesn't require an external file or the declaration of an autocall library

Our FCMP code is our only proposed CopytoClipboard method that will copy more than 256 characters

Create the following sas program and store it in a directory that exists in your

SASAUTOS* path

Getting around BOTH limitations – macro + PROC FCMP

* see: http://analytics.ncsu.edu/sesug/2008/SBC-126.pdf

http://analytics.ncsu.edu/sesug/2008/SBC-126.pdf



%macro copy2clipbrd(lib,mem); proc fcmp outlib=work.func.util; function c2cb( lib $ , mem $ ); rc = filename( 'clippy' , ' ' , 'clipbrd' ); if ( rc ne 0 ) then return( 1 ); fid = fopen( 'clippy' , 'o' , 0 , 'v' ); if ( fid = 0 ) then return( 2 ); dsid = open( catx( '.' , lib , mem ) ); if ( dsid = 0 ) then return( 3 ); nvar = attrn( dsid , 'nvar' ); array v[1] /nosymbols; call dynamic_array( v , nvar ); rc = attrn( dsid , 'any' ); rc = fput( fid , varname( dsid , 1 ) ); v[1] = ifn( vartype( dsid , 1 ) = 'C' , 1 , 2 ); do i = 2 to nvar; rc = fput( fid , '09'x ); rc = fput( fid , varname( dsid , i ) ); v[i] = ifn( vartype( dsid , i ) = 'C' , 1 , 2 ); end; rc = fwrite( fid );




Create a macro that:

1. has 2 parameters (the libname and memname that will be passed by the gsubmit call)

2. uses PROC FCMP to create a function that will do all of the work

3. runs the function

4. cleans up after itself



Run PROC FCMP to create a function called c2cb that has 2 parameters (the libname and

memname that will be passed by the macro)



Assign fileref/open files and ensure all operations are successful

1. assign and open 'clippy' using the clipbrd access method

2. open the input file

3. return error codes if any operation isn't successful


Getting around BOTH limitations – macro + PROC FCMP Do the following:

1. get number of variables

2. create dynamic array

3. get and write tab-delimited variable names

4. assign variable types to array

5. write variable names to clipboard

do i = 1 to attrn( dsid , 'nlobs' ); rc = fetchobs( dsid , i ); if ( v[1] = 1 ) then rc = fput( fid , getvarc( dsid , 1 )); else do; fmt = varfmt( dsid , 1 ) ; if missing( fmt ) then fmt = 'best12.'; rc=fput(fid,putc(putn(getvarn(dsid,1),fmt),'$char12.')); end; do j = 2 to nvar; rc = fput( fid , '09'x ); if ( v[j] = 1 ) then rc = fput( fid , getvarc( dsid , j ) ); else do; fmt = varfmt( dsid , j ) ; if missing( fmt ) then fmt = 'best12.'; rc=fput(fid,putc(putn(getvarn(dsid,j ),fmt ),'$char12.') ); end; end; rc = fwrite( fid ); end;


Get and write the data for all records



Write out the data for the first variable



Write out the tab-dlimited data for the 2nd thru jth variable

rc = fclose( fid ); rc = close( dsid ); rc = filename( 'clippy' ); return (0); endsub; quit; %local cmplib; %let cmplib=%sysfunc(getoption(cmplib)); options cmplib=(work.func); %put %sysfunc(c2cb(&lib,&mem)) ; options cmplib=(&cmplib); %mend copy2clipbrd;

Getting around BOTH limitations – macro + PROC FCMP Clean-up, end function and quit FCMP



Run the function



Restore cmplib option setting

and end the macro



Action


It will appear on the menu as: Export to Clipboard





Type the action command you want SAS to apply

Action Command gsubmit '%%copy2clipbrd(%08b,%32b)';

gsubmit '%%copy2clipbrd(%08b,%32b)';









then, whenever you right-click on a file and select the option (i.e., press hot key (X) or point and left-click)

You can paste the file (Ctrl-V) into a workbook

and, if you want, you could add all of your repeated tasks to the SAS Explorer menu

Copy Variable Names to Clipboard

Run Proc Contents

Get descriptive statistics

Show all correlations

Compare groups

Print bar charts

Run factor analysis

http://www.sascommunity.org/wiki/User:Art297

The macro, paper and Powerpoint can be found at:



The macro, paper and Powerpoint can be found at:

A_Poor/Rich_SAS_Users_Proc_Export


Your comments and questions

are valued and encouraged

Contact the Authors

Arthur Tabachneck, Ph.D. myQNA, Inc. Thornhill, ON [email protected]

Tom Abernathy Pfizer, Inc. New York, NY [email protected]

Randy Herbison Westat Rockville, MD [email protected]

Matt Kastin I-Behavior, Inc. Penn Valley, PA [email protected]

Documents

A Poor/Rich SAS® User's Proc Export - Toronto Area SAS Society