Click the image above to play the video.
Log in to UF Apps and search for SAS using the top-right search button/bar. Doubleclick SAS to open it.
After startup the SAS interface looks as follows:
There are three main windows/panels in SAS:
- Explorer: in the left panel, used to navigate folders/libraries
- Log: in the middle panel, shows the commands that ran and output
- Editor: middle panel, below; used to edit programs
Use the explorer window to navigate libraries (links to folders), or the available drives (right-most icon is 'This PC' for local installations, in this case 'UFApps' as this screenshot is taken from UF Apps which runs 'in the cloud'):
Notice that this window can also display results (like regression output), in that case, you may need to switch between 'results' and 'explorer' (see bottom of explorer window):
Libraries are references to folders on the hard disk. Doubleclick 'libraries' to see which libraries are available:
The default library is 'work'. It always exists and is empty on startup. Any datasets in this library are deleted after a session.
The following code creates a new dataset in library (that is a fancy name for 'folder') work, and consists of a single record:
data work.myFirst;
myVar = 1;
otherVar = "hello";
run;Copy/paste the code to the editor; select the 4 lines. F3 runs the code.
Notice the explorer and log:
Doubleclick the myFirst dataset in the work library to inspect the contents of the dataset:
Note that dataset names are case insensitive; so 'myFirst' and 'myfirst' refer to the same dataset.
To navigate 'up' (back to libraries, or to a parent folder), click the 'up icon':
Note: if the 'up' icon is not there, you may need to click in the left panel first.
To inspect the drives that are available, navigate up in the explorer, and click 'UF Apps' (4th icon).
Doubleclicking on a drive, for example 'local disk C on W-...', gives the drive content:
Notice the folder location, '\\Client\C$', for local installations of SAS this would most likely be something like 'C:'.
To make datasets permanent (datasets in 'work' are deleted when the session ends), make a subfolder on 'C:' (or another local drive), for example 'C:\temp'. When a folder exists, SAS is able to make a library reference to it. (That is, a short name can be used to refer to that folder). For example:
libname project "C:\temp";The above statement creates a library which is basically a link to a folder (in this case a link to the 'temp' folder on the local drive). Files in that folder can now be referenced by 'project'.
The following code makes a copy of 'myFirst' in the 'work' library to 'test' in the 'project' library.
/* make a copy */
data project.test;
set work.myFirst;
run;Verify that a file named 'test.sas7bdat' now exists in your folder (in this case C:\temp).