Chapter Contents

Previous

Next

Specifying Pathnames

You can reference an external file directly by specifying its pathname in the FILE, INFILE, or %INCLUDE statements, or you can reference the file indirectly by specifying a fileref and a pathname in the FILENAME statement and then using the fileref in the FILE, INFILE, or %INCLUDE statements.

Whether you reference a file directly or indirectly, you will need to specify its pathname in the appropriate statement. In most cases, you must enclose the name in quotes. For example, the following INFILE statement refers to the file /users/pat/cars:

infile '/users/pat/cars';

file '/dev/ttyp1';

The level of specification depends on your current directory. You can use the character substitutions shown in Character Substitutions in Pathnames to specify the pathname. You can also use wildcards as described in Using Wildcards in Pathnames (Input Only).

You can omit the quotes on a filename if

• there is not already a fileref defined with that filename.

• the file has the filename extension expected by the statement that you are using to refer to the file. If you do not enclose a filename in quotes, the FILE and INFILE statements assume a file extension of .dat, and the %INCLUDE statement assumes a file extension of .sas.

• the file is in the current directory.

• the filename is all lower case characters.

For example, if the current directory is /users/mkt/report and it includes file qtr.sas, you can reference qtr.sas in any of the following statements:

%include '/users/mkt/report/qtr.sas';
%include 'qtr.sas';
file 'qtr.sas';

%include qtr;

Using Wildcards in Pathnames (Input Only)

You can use the *, ?, and [ ] wildcards to specify pathnames in the FILENAME (only if the fileref is to be used for input), INFILE, and %INCLUDE statements and the INCLUDE command.

*	matches one or more characters, except for the period at the beginning of filenames.
?	matches any single character.
[ ]	matches any single character from the set of characters defined within the brackets. You can specify a range of characters by specifying the starting character and ending character separated by a hyphen.

Wildcards are supported for input only. You cannot use wildcards in the FILE statement.

The following example reads input from every file in the current directory that begins with the string wild and ends with .dat:

filename wild 'wild*.dat';
data;
   infile wild;
   input;
run;

The following example reads input from every file in every subdirectory of the current working directory:

filename subfiles '*/*';
data;
   infile subfiles;
   input;
run;

You can also use wildcards in filenames, but not in directory names, when you use aggregate syntax:

filename curdir ".";
data;
  infile curdir('wild*');
  input;
run;

The following statement associates the fileref myref with all files that begin with alphabetic characters. Files beginning with numbers or other characters such as the period or tilde are excluded.

filename myref '[a-zA-Z]*.dat';

filename myref '[Ss][Aa][Ll][Ee][Ss]199[0-9].dat';

Chapter Contents

Previous

Next

Top of Page

Copyright 1999 by SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.