Convert SAS file to aflat file

dharani.nagarajan · New User Joined: 11 Nov 2010 Posts: 21 Location: India

Hi,

Can anyone please help to get a JCL that converts SAS file into a PS flat file.

Thanks,
Dharani

Nic Clouston · Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2014 1:18 am

JCL won't do that - it only tells the OS what programs you want to run and the resources required.

What is a SAS file? Is it not already a PS file? If not, what format is it? If SAS does have its own formats of datasets (not files) then use a SAS program to convert it.

dharani.nagarajan · New User Joined: 11 Nov 2010 Posts: 21 Location: India

Hi Nic,

What is that SAS program that converts it.. Can you please help me with that

Thanks,
Dharani

Rohit Umarjikar · Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2014 3:02 am

Its "SAS".
Would you show us or answer questions that has been asked by Nic please?

steve-myers · Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2014 3:28 am

"SAS" is a large program. There are mainframe versions as well as other versions for a number of other platforms.

In the mainframe version of "SAS," the program maintains "files" in a container data set somewhat like members of a mainframe partitioned data set. The internal format of the container data set, as well as the "files," is proprietary to the SAS Institute.

It has been more than 20 years since I last worked with "SAS." If I remember correctly, the "SAS" program provides a method "PROC PRINT?" to list the contents of a "file" in a SAS container data set. Consult "SAS" documentation for more details.

Robert Sample · Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2014 8:03 am

If you are talking about converting a SAS data base into a flat file, this MUST be done through SAS. SAS two-level names work on sequential data sets, but they are specially formatted so that SAS can process them more efficiently.

Furthermore, the simplest way to do this is probably not what you want:

dharani.nagarajan · New User Joined: 11 Nov 2010 Posts: 21 Location: India

Thank you so much Robert.

I have a file with
Record format as FS and Record length : 27648

By using the below step I got the contents of this file

//STEP001 EXEC SAS,WORK='1500,1500',
// OPTIONS='MACRO,DQUOTE,COMPRESS=NO'
//*
//ALLOC DD DSN=TEST.INPUT.SAS1,
// DISP=SHR
//SASLOG DD SYSOUT=*
//SASOUT DD SYSOUT=*
//SYSIN DD *
OPTIONS NOCENTER OBS=MAX;
PROC CONTENTS DATA = ALLOC._ALL_;RUN;
//*

Using this content as the file structure I have to write the records from this input file to a PS file with RECFM FB and Record length 226.

Length 226 I got from the content structure.

Thanks,
Dharani

vasanthz · Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2014 10:39 pm

Hello,
You are on the right path in starting with CONTENTS procedure.
How did you determine this?

dharani.nagarajan · New User Joined: 11 Nov 2010 Posts: 21 Location: India

Thank you Vasanth..

What does 'NUM' specifies in the content..

Field1 Num 8

Is that a Zone decimal or a Packed decimal

Can you please let me know.

vasanthz · Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2014 1:18 am

Hello,
SAS stores all data with only two variable types, character and numeric.
Note: NUM 8 does not mean that it is a number which can have only 8 digits.

This one is just a numeric value. It can contain any value in it like
3000000000345, or 344556.4567234. or -34234653454576
All of them represented as NUM.

Even if you read a PS file into SAS, which has binary data or packed data as input, SAS will still store it as NUM "format" by default.

It matters only when you print the value in the dataset.

You could start with "The little SAS book" to get hold of the SAS concepts, its a well written book. I cannot explain it in COBOL analogy since I have not worked in COBOL.

Robert Sample · Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2014 4:03 am

IIRC (and since it has been a while since I had to look it up, I could be wrong), SAS stores numeric values as binary (COMP-5 in COBOL) internally no matter what they started out as.

vasanthz · Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2014 8:07 pm

Robert,
You are correct, the FORMAT of the data is num, however as you said the data is actually in binary.

I wonder why would the TS want to know how the data is actually stored?

Dharani, are you trying to write a COBOL program to read a SAS file and write to a PS file?
If that is the idea, then it may not work.

dharani.nagarajan · New User Joined: 11 Nov 2010 Posts: 21 Location: India

Thank you Robert and Vasanth.

I'm trying to create a PS file from the SAS file. I want to use the PS file in a COBOL program.

So the PS file I write should be in COBOL acceptable format.

Robert Sample · Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2014 1:31 am

Do you know what is in the SAS file? If not, do a PROC CONTENTS on it to find out. Then you do something like this in SAS:

Phrzby Phil · Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2014 8:35 am

I believe the SAS numeric default is double precision floating point, not pure binary. The length = 8 is bytes.