SAS Companion for the OpenVMS Operating Environment

Introduction

This section discusses methods of accessing external files on disk. It also discusses accessing external devices and OpenVMS commands. For additional information about accessing external files on tape, see Accessing External Files on Tape.

External files are files whose format is determined by the operating environment rather than by the SAS System. These files are not managed by the SAS System. External files include raw data files, files that contain SAS programming statements, and procedure output files.

The following SAS statements and functions are used to access external files on disk or tape:

FILENAME statement and FILENAME function: associate a fileref with an external file that you want to use for input or output. (For details about the FILENAME statement, see FILENAME. For details about the FILENAME function, see FILENAME.)
INFILE statement: opens an external file for reading data lines. (For details, see INFILE.)
FILE statement: opens an external file for writing data lines. (For details, see FILE.)
%INCLUDE statement: opens an external file for reading SAS statements. (For details, see %INCLUDE.)

You also specify external files in various windowing environment fields (for example, as a file destination in the OUTPUT MANAGER window or as a source input in an INCLUDE command).

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