I recently switched computers at work and now when I output the results of procedures such as proc means, the data looks like plain text and it has weird behavior. I'm using SAS 9.3.
For instance, it won't display the title I defined and it doesn't clearly mark the results for the different values of the by variable.
Has anyone ever run across this? I have gone into preferences and ods graphics/enable html are checked.
Tools->Options->Preferences->Results
Related
When using R markdown for making statistical reports, I have the ability to echo the R code in my output document. I'm learning SAS and I was wondering if it was possible to highlight or echo the SAS code in my final ODS report ? I'm using a dirty hack right know to display the code in my document, which is using "ods text = ", but it seems quite redundant. Plus it doesn't add syntax highlighting.
That feature does not exist in the SAS language right now, but it has been mentioned in several talks by Amy Peters, principal product manager of the SAS programing environments, as a planned feature for a near-future SAS release (with no specific date yet, but hopefully in the next 2 years). It would likely be implemented in a similar fashion to Jupyter Notebooks, in that you write your code and get your output inline.
That said, SAS does support Jupyter Notebooks, which is the best current (third party) solution. Contact your SAS administrator for more information.
I have an idea here, I'm the type of guy who dosent take no for answer and find a way to fiddle and get it done... but i think this is abit far fetch... you can try still I think it will work with mostly evrything but may have a hard time to play with quotes when you have multiple semi colomns....
Check:
I started by creating a dumbass dataset :
data tata;
x=1;
run;
then we do the following:
%let code= select * from tata;
proc sql;
create table report as
&code.;
quit;
proc print data=report;
footnote "&code.";
run;
The rationale:
I think it you put your code in macrovariables and then execute those macro variables you would be able to print show the code after by printing the macrovariable following your text...
See the sample
SAS has several forms it uses to create output data sets from within a procedure. It is not always clear whether or not a particular procedure can generate a data set and, if it seems to be able to, it's not always clear how.
Off the top of my head, here are some examples of how widely the syntax can differ.
Example 1
proc sort data = sashelp.baseball out = baseball_sorted;
by
league
division
;
run;
Example 2
proc means noprint data = baseball_sorted;
by
league
division
;
var nHits;
output
out = baseball_avg_hits (drop = _TYPE_ _FREQ_)
mean = mean_hits
;
run;
Example 3
ods exclude all;
ods output
statistics = baseball_statistics
equality = baseball_ftest
;
proc ttest data = baseball_sorted;
class league;
var nHits;
run;
ods exclude none;
Example 4
The PROC ANOVA OUTSTAT= option.
It seems almost as if SAS has implemented each of these willy-nilly. Is the SAS syntax dictating how to create a data set directed by some consistent approach I am not seeing or is it truly capricious and arbitrary?
For PROC code, the syntax for outputting data is often specific to that procedure, which often feels willy-nilly. (Your examples 1, 2, 4) I think PROC developers are given a lot of freedom, and remember that many of these PROCS are 30+ years old.
The great thing about the Output Delivery System (ODS, your example 3) is it provides a single syntax for outputting data, regardless of the procedure. So you can use the ODS OUTPUT statement with (almost?) any PROC. The names and structures of the output objects will of course vary between PROCs. So if you are looking for a consistent approach, I would focus on using ODS OUTPUT. ODS was added in V7 (I think).
It would be interesting to try to find an example of an output dataset which could be made by a PROC but could not be made by ODS OUTPUT. I hope there aren't any. If that is the case, you could consider the range of OUTPUT statements/options within PROCs as legacy code.
Agree with Quentin. You have to remember that there are SAS systems out there running code written in the 80s. SAS would have a huge headache if they forced every team to rewrite all the procedures and then forced their customers to change all their code. SAS has been around since the 60s and the organic growth of the syntax is to be expected.
FWIW, having an OUT= statement makes sense on things with no graphical output. I.E. PROC SORT or PROC TRANSPOSE.
The way I see it there are four main ways to specify the output data sets.
In the PROC statement you may be able to specify some type of output statements or options, such as OUT= OUTEST=.
In the main statement of the procedure, ie MODEL/TABLE can have options that allow for output. ie PROC FREQ has an OUT= on the TABLE statement.
An explicit OUTPUT statement within a procedure. These are typically from older procedures. ie PROC MEANS
ODS tables which are relatively newer method, more frequently used these days since the format aligns with what you'd expect to see.
Yes, there are multiple places to check, but fortunately the SAS documentation for procedures is relatively clear with the options and how to use/specify the outputs.
If I've missed anything that seems different post in the comments and I can update this.
PS. Although SAS is definitely bad, trying to navigate different packages/modules in Python to export an XLSX file isn't straight forward either. Some packages support some options others don't. I've given up on asking why these days and just accept it as peculiarities of the different languages at this point.
When I searched, all the results came up for SAS 9.3. That suggested I use the commands:
ods html close; *STOPS WRITING TO THE CURRENT RESULTS VIEWER;
ods html; *OPENS A NEW RESULTS VIEWER;
I'm running SAS 9.4 (Base SAS) and this doesn't work for me, which leads me to the conclusion that the way to clear the results viewer has changed from SAS 9.3 to SAS 9.4.
What to do?
I believe you need to run the following:
dm 'odsresults; clear';
or just type odsresults;clear in the SAS command box. This works for me in 9.3, can't see why it would be different in 9.4.
For further info - http://support.sas.com/kb/4/159.html
If you're in Enterprise Guide, the default results viewer corresponds to the ODS destination 'SASREPORT', so closing and re-opening the HTML destination won't do what you're expecting. Look at the very top of your log in EG, and find the ODS statement that is automatically included there. You can do an ODS _ALL_ CLOSE; later in your program, and then copy-paste that ODS statement from the top of your log... that should then effectively throw away whatever output was generated up the that point, and you'll only see whatever came after you re-opened the SASREPORT destination.
If this works, you will probably then want to examine the copy-pasted ODS statement and remove any unnecessary options etc.
EDIT: after reading your follow-ups, and still assuming that you're in EG ('Base SAS' is just a language and doesn't have a results viewer of its own) then go to Tools -> Options -> Results General and update your Replace Results setting to either 'prompt without replacing' or 'prompt before replacing'.
In SAS 9.3, I could use ODS HTML GPATH to specify the path where I wanted graphs to be saved (if I so desired). In 9.4, by default (i.e. every time I open SAS) whenever I make a graph (with PROC SGPLOT, e.g.), it automatically saves the plot to the location where the SAS program is saved. I've tried going to Tools --> Options --> Preferences --> Results and unchecking every combination of the HTML and ODS options, but no matter what I'm still getting automatically saved graphs. How can I turn this off? Preferably I'd still have ODS output within SAS, but I do not want these PNG (or whatever) images to be saved to my computer outside SAS automatically.
EDIT: More information because the differences as stated above were not clear.
1) In 9.3 I had to say ODS GRAPHICS ON and specify ODS HTML GPATH in order to have SAS save my plots to my computer outside of SAS (or so I thought). If I wanted ODS graphics inside of SAS, but not save graphs outside of SAS, I could just say ODS GRAPHICS ON and skip the ODS HTML GPATH statement.
2) When I open 9.4 and do not make any statements about ODS (i.e. leave settings at default), but run a procedure such as SGPLOT, I A) get both a html graph (ODS graph that shows up in SAS's 'Results' window) and a graph that I can double-click to open in Windows Photo Viewer, and B) the plot is additionally and automatically saved where my SAS program is located as a PNG.
Trying to stop this automatic graphing saving, I have tried the following in SAS 9.4 before running PROC SGPLOT:
1) ODS GRAPHICS OFF: Nothing changes. I still get everything listed in point (2) above.
2) ODS HTML CLOSE (with ODS GRAPHICS ON): Lose html/ODS version of graph within SAS, but still have graph in SAS I could double-click that opens in Windows Photo Viewer, and still the graph saves automatically to my SAS program's location.
3) ODS GRAPHICS OFF and ODS HTML CLOSE: Same thing as previous case ((2) directly above).
What I want (and I feel like this is how it was in 9.3) is to yes, have ODS graphs come up within SAS (don't really need the version you can double-click to open in Windows Photo Viewer), but no, do not have SAS save a PNG to my computer (specifically, my SAS program's location).
First off, a few notes about what you tried.
ODS GRAPHICS on/off will not have any real effect on SGPLOT or any of the SG procedures; they are all ODS GRAPHICS no matter what. What it does affect is PROC UNIVARIATE and similar procedures that have two types of graphics - old style graphics and ODS GRAPHICS. ODS GRAPHICS ON tells them to use ODS GRAPHICS, and OFF tells them to use the older method.
ODS HTML CLOSE will tell SAS not to produce HTML output, but as long as you have another destination open (ODS LISTING?) it will produce graphs still to the GRAPH destination. Addtionally, the fact that it still produces graphics at all with ODS HTML CLOSE (as opposed to the note "No output destinations active" and no output) tells me you still have a destination open (again, probably LISTING). Thus, ODS HTML GPATH will not necessarily solve your problem (as it will only impact where the HTML output will go). You need to set GPATH for each open destination (which is either LISTING, HTML, or both, depending on the checkboxes in your preferences).
The solution:
Since you want it to go away, your best bet is to make it in your work directory (which is cleaned up by SAS when it properly shuts down).
ods listing gpath="%sysfunc(getoption(work))";
proc sgplot data=sashelp.class;
vbar sex;
run;
Note that the .png files are created (as they always are), but now they go into the work catalog (which you can browse like a sub-library and see each of the files inside).
You could put the initial line in an autoexec.sas file and tell SAS to run that when SAS starts up (-AUTOEXEC option on command line).
You also could uncheck Listing in tools->preferences->Results, and/or use ODS LISTING CLOSE;, and those files should not appear.
Go to Tools --> Options --> Preferences --> Results and uncheck Create listing. It should take care of the automatic saving of PNG files to your program files.
In 9.3, when ODS HTML is on, graphs are defaulted to the user's home directory. They are saved to the hard drive, even if you don't specify a path. Otherwise, there is no way for the browser to display the images. The default location may have moved in 9.4 (I don't have a copy to test), but both versions put png files on your hard drive.
I have a large SAS dataset and I would like to make a series of tables and charts using by value processing. I am outputing these to a PDF.
Is there any way to get SAS to alternate between the table and the chart as it goes through the data? Right now, I have to print all of the tables first and then print the charts. If it were just 4 tables/charts, then I would be ok writing
Here is a simple example:
data sample;
input byval $ item $ amount;
datalines;
A X 15
A Y 16
A Z 12
B X 25
B Y 10
B Z 18
;
run;
symbol1 i=j;
proc print data=sample;
by byval;
var item amount;
run;
proc gplot uniform data=sample;
by byval;
plot amount*item;
run;
This prints 2 tables, followed by 2 charts.
I would like the Chart for "A" to come after the table for "A" so that the reader can flip through the pdf and always see the associated charts and tables together.
I could write separate procs for each one, but then the gplot won't have a uniform axis (and it gets messy if I have 100 different groups instead of 2).
I thought about pumping them into greplay but then you can't use titles with "#BYVAL1".
Is there any easy way to do this?
I've never used it, but it may be worth checking out ODS DOCUMENT. This allows you to store the output of all your procedures and then reference specific items from them using PROC DOCUMENT.
Below is a link to the SAS website with useful information about this, in particular the paper by Cynthia Zender for the SAS Global Forum 2009.
http://support.sas.com/rnd/base/ods/odsdocument/index.html
Cynthia also regularly contributes to the SAS Support Communities website (https://communities.sas.com/community/support-communities), so it may be worth asking on there if you are still stuck.
Good luck
I don't know of any way to do what you ask directly. GREPLAY is probably the closest you'll come; the primary problem is that SAS processes the PROCs linearly, first processing the entire PROC PRINT, then the entire PROC GPLOT. GREPLAY would allow you to redisplay the output, but if that doesn't work for your needs due to the #BYVAL issue, I'm not sure there's a better solution. Perhaps you can modify the title afterwards (not sure if GREPLAY allows this)?
You could try using ODS LAYOUT, but I don't think that would be any better. The one way it could be better is if you can work out having two columns on a 'page', one column being the PROC PRINT outputs, one the PROC GPLOT, and then print the columns one page than the other. I don't think this is possible, but it might be worth exploring.
You might also try setting up a macro to do each BYVAL separately, defining the axis in a uniform manner manually (ie, defining it based on your own calculation of the correct axis parameters, as an argument to the macro). That is probably the easiest solution that might still allow #BYVAL to work properly.
You might also try browsing about Richard DeVenezia's site (http://www.devenezia.com/downloads/sas/samples/ ) which has a lot of examples of SAS/GRAPH solutions. He also posts on SAS-L (sasl#listserv.uga.edu) sometimes, not sure if I've seen him on StackOverflow. He's probably the person most likely to be able to answer the question that I know of.