print log to table or to text file on LOCAL drive - sas

Question

I want to get the content of my SAS EG log into R.
My first idea was to use PROC PRINTTO to print to a text file that I would then import, but I can only use it to print the log to the server on which SAS is installed, which I am not able to access from R (I don't have admin rights).
I figured out a way to run egp projects from R and to read SAS tables from R however, so I will be able to fetch the log if I can redirect its content to a table, or to a macro variable that I will then store into a table.
How can I do this ?

Answer 1

You could register and run your code as a SAS Stored Process, and use R to call it over http. Appending &_debug=log will give you the log. Just one option.. And avoids proc print.

Answer 2

I figured out a way:
use PROC PRINTTO to redirect the log of my project to a file on the server where I can write to from SAS (and not R).
read this file as a delimited file into a table, using an exotic delimiter that I will just have to try not to use in my code (no delimiter seems not to be an option unfortunately)
import this table from R and trim the irrelevant first rows
My SAS code :
%let writeable_folder_on_server = /some_path/;
%let temp_log_for_R = &writeable_folder_on_server/temp_log_for_R.txt;
%let log_as_tbl = mylib.mytbl;
proc printto log="&temp_log_for_R" print="&temp_log_for_R" new;
run;
proc datasets library= mylib nolist;
delete mytbl;
run;
/* code producing log */
%put foo;
%put bar;
proc import datafile="&temp_log_for_R" out=&log_as_tbl dbms=dlm replace;
delimiter='§';
getnames=no;
GUESSINGROWS=MAX;
run;
The replace parameter of the IMPORT procedure "should" make the table deletion redundant but for some reason (maybe because I used an oracle library) it doesn't.
It produces the following output, stored into the table :
NOTE: PROCEDURE PRINTTO used (Total process time):
real time 0.01 seconds
user cpu time 0.01 seconds
system cpu time 0.01 seconds
memory 904.75k
OS Memory 15140.00k
Timestamp 01/30/2019 01:29:21 PM
Page Faults 2
Page Reclaims 251
Page Swaps 0
Voluntary Context Switches 1
Involuntary Context Switches 0
Block Input Operations 0
Block Output Operations 0
28
29 proc datasets library= mylib nolist;
30 delete mytbl;
31 run;
NOTE: Deleting mylib.mytbl (memtype=DATA)
32
33 /* code producing log */
34 %put foo;
foo
35 %put bar;
bar
36
NOTE: PROCEDURE DATASETS used (Total process time)
real time 0.17 seconds
user cpu time 0.02 seconds
system cpu time 0.00 seconds
memory 2425.56k
OS Memory 17956.00k
Timestamp 01/30/2019 01:29:21 PM
2
Page Faults 5
Page Reclaims 858
Page Swaps 0
Voluntary Context Switches 57
Involuntary Context Switches 4
Block Input Operations 0
Block Output Operations 0