Moving and Accessing SAS Files across Operating Environments

Concatenating Multiple Libraries

In order to expand the scope of file access from a single library to multiple libraries, use library concatenation. With an expanded scope, you can perform operations on files that span multiple libraries. For example, you can concatenate two libraries that were created by the same SAS version or you can concatenate two libraries that were created by different SAS versions.

Here is an example of library concatenation:

libname v6lib 'SAS-data-library' server=shr1 rengine=v6;
libname v8lib 'SAS-data-library' server=shr1 rengine=v8;
libname catlib (v8lib v6lib);

SAS-data-library must be the physical name that is recognized by the operating environment.

The first LIBNAME statement assigns the libref V6LIB to a SAS data library that is accessed with the V6 remote engine through the SAS/SHARE server SHR1.

The second LIBNAME statement assigns the libref V8LIB to a SAS data library that is accessed with the V8 remote engine through the SAS/SHARE server SHR1.

The third LIBNAME statement assigns the libref CATLIB to concatenated libraries that are referenced by the librefs V8LIB and V6LIB. The order of the librefs identifies the sequence in which the libraries are searched. The SAS operation uses the first occurrence of the specified file.

For example, if the same file exists in both libraries and you delete that file, then the file in the first library (for example, STOCK.SAS7BDAT in V8LIB) is deleted. If V6LIB precedes V8LIB in the library concatenation (for example, STOCK.SD2 in V6LIB), then that file is deleted. If the specified file exists only in one library, then that file is deleted. For a complete list of filename extensions according to member type and version, see .

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