SAS Companion for the CMS Environment

Running SAS in Noninteractive Mode

When you use SAS in noninteractive mode, the SAS program (which has been stored in a CMS file) usually runs without your intervention. CMS retains exclusive use of the terminal as the noninteractive SAS job executes. However, if your SAS program invokes windowing procedures, you can interact with the program during program execution.

To invoke SAS in noninteractive mode, enter the SAS command followed by the name of the SAS program file that you want to execute, as well as any SAS system options that you want to specify. For example, suppose you have stored SAS statements and data lines in a program file named MYPROG SAS. At the CMS ready prompt, type the SAS command, the name of the file, and any system options as follows:

sas myprog (nodate

The program file must have a filetype of SAS. However, you do not need to include the filetype in the filename because the SAS command uses the SAS filetype by default. The program file can reside in any accessed disk or SFS directory; SAS uses the standard CMS search order to locate the file. The file can contain either fixed-length lines or varying-length lines.

A SAS program file can be constructed by any of the following:

the FILE command
a CMS editor
another program.

When you execute a SAS program noninteractively, the SAS log and your procedure output file are each written to a CMS disk file. Normally, these files are written to the disk on which the SAS program file was found. The SAS log is stored in a file of filetype SASLOG. The procedure output (if any) is stored in a file of filetype LISTING.

After the last step of your program executes, the CMS READY prompt shows that CMS is again ready to process commands.

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