SAS Procedures Guide

Brief Descriptions of Base SAS Procedures

APPEND procedure: adds observations from one SAS data set to the end of another SAS data set.
BMDP procedure: invokes a BMDP program to analyze data in a SAS data set. See the SAS documentation for your operating environment for more information.
CALENDAR procedure: displays data from a SAS data set in a monthly calendar format. PROC CALENDAR can display holidays in the month, schedule tasks, and process data for multiple calendars with work schedules that vary.
CATALOG procedure: manages entries in SAS catalogs. PROC CATALOG is an interactive, nonwindowing procedure that enables you to display the contents of a catalog, copy an entire catalog or specific entries in a catalog, and rename, exchange, or delete entries in a catalog.
CHART procedure: produces vertical and horizontal bar charts (also called histograms), block charts, pie charts, and star charts. These charts provide a quick visual representation of the values of a single variable or several variables. PROC CHART can also display a statistic associated with the values.
CIMPORT procedure: restores a transport file created by the CPORT procedure to its original form (a SAS data library, catalog, or data set) in the format appropriate to the operating environment. Coupled with the CPORT procedure, PROC CIMPORT enables you to move SAS data libraries, catalogs, and data sets from one operating environment to another.
COMPARE procedure: compares the contents of two SAS data sets. You can also use PROC COMPARE to compare the values of different variables within a single data set. PROC COMPARE produces a variety of reports on the comparisons that it performs.
CONTENTS procedure: prints descriptions of the contents of one or more files in a SAS data library.
CONVERT procedure: converts BMDP system files, OSIRIS system files, and SPSS portable files to SAS data sets. See the SAS documentation for your operating environment for more information.
COPY procedure: copies an entire SAS data library or specific members of the library. You can limit processing to specific types of library members.
CORR procedure: computes Pearson product-moment and weighted product-moment correlation coefficients between variables and descriptive statistics for these variables. In addition, PROC CORR can compute three nonparametric measures of association (Spearman's rank-order correlation, Kendall's tau-b, and Hoeffding's measure of dependence, D), partial correlations (Pearson's partial correlation, Spearman's partial rank-order correlation, and Kendall's partial tau-b), and Cronbach's coefficient alpha.
CPORT procedure: writes SAS data libraries, data sets, and catalogs in a special format called a transport file. Coupled with the CIMPORT procedure, PROC CPORT enables you to move SAS libraries, data sets, and catalogs from one operating environment to another.
DATASETS procedure: lists, copies, renames, and deletes SAS files and SAS generation groups, manages indexes, and appends SAS data sets in a SAS data library. The procedure provides all the capabilities of the APPEND, CONTENTS, and COPY procedures. You can also modify variables within data sets, manage data set attributes, such as labels and passwords, or create and delete integrity constraints.
EXPLODE procedure: produces oversized printing of text to generate displays such as posters, flip charts, and header pages.
EXPORT procedure: reads data from a SAS data set and writes it to an external data source.
FORMAT procedure: creates user-defined informats and formats for character or numeric variables. PROC FORMAT also prints the contents of a format library, creates a control data set to write other informats or formats, and reads a control data set to create informats or formats.
FORMS procedure: produces labels for envelopes, mailing labels, external tape labels, file cards, and other printer forms that have a regular pattern.
FREQ procedure: produces one-way to n-way frequency tables and reports frequency counts. PROC FREQ can compute chi-square tests for one-way to n-way tables, tests and measures of association and of agreement for two-way to n-way cross-tabulation tables, risks and risk difference for 2×2 tables, trends tests, and Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel statistics. You can also create output data sets.
FSLIST procedure: displays the contents of an external file or copies text from an external file to the SAS Text Editor.
IMPORT procedure: reads data from an external data source and writes them to a SAS data set.
MEANS procedure: computes descriptive statistics for numeric variables across all observations and within groups of observations. You can also create an output data set that contains specific statistics and identifies minimum and maximum values for groups of observations.
OPTIONS procedure: lists the current values of all SAS system options.
PDS procedure: lists, deletes, and renames the members of a partitioned data set. See the SAS documentation for your operating environment for more information.
PDSCOPY procedure: copies partitioned data sets from disk to tape, disk to disk, tape to tape, or tape to disk. See the SAS documentation for your operating environment for more information.
PLOT procedure: produces scatter plots that graph one variable against another. The coordinates of each point on the plot correspond to the two variables' values in one or more observations of the input data set.
PMENU procedure: defines menus that you can use in DATA step windows, macro windows, and SAS/AF windows, or in any SAS application that enables you to specify customized menus.
PRINT procedure: prints the observations in a SAS data set, using all or some of the variables. PROC PRINT can also print totals and subtotals for numeric variables.
PRINTTO procedure: defines destinations for SAS procedure output and the SAS log.
RANK procedure: computes ranks for one or more numeric variables across the observations of a SAS data set. The ranks are output to a new SAS data set. Alternatively, PROC RANK produces normal scores or other rank scores.
REGISTRY procedure: imports registry information into the USER portion of the SAS Registry.
RELEASE procedure: releases unused space at the end of a disk data set in the OS/390 environment. See the SAS documentation for this operating environment for more information.
REPORT procedure: combines features of the PRINT, MEANS, and TABULATE procedures with features of the DATA step in a single report-writing tool that can produce both detail and summary reports.
SORT procedure: sorts observations in a SAS data set by one or more variables. PROC SORT stores the resulting sorted observations in a new SAS data set or replaces the original data set.
SOURCE procedure: provides an easy way to back up and process source library data sets. See the SAS documentation for your operating environment for more information.
SQL procedure: implements a subset of the Structured Query Language (SQL) for the SAS System. SQL is a standardized, widely used language that retrieves and updates data in SAS data sets, SQL views, and DBMS tables, as well as views based on those tables. PROC SQL can also create tables and views, summaries, statistics, and reports and perform utility functions such as sorting and concatenating.
STANDARD procedure: standardizes some or all of the variables in a SAS data set to a given mean and standard deviation and produces a new SAS data set that contains the standardized values.
SUMMARY procedure: computes descriptive statistics for the variables in a SAS data across all observations and within groups of observations and outputs the results to a new SAS data set.
TABULATE procedure: displays descriptive statistics in tabular form. The value in each table cell is calculated from the variables and statistics that define the pages, rows, and columns of the table. The statistic associated with each cell is calculated on values from all observations in that category. You can output the results to a SAS data set.
TAPECOPY procedure: copies an entire tape volume or files from one or more tape volumes to one output tape volume. See the SAS documentation for your operating environment for more information.
TAPELABEL procedure: lists the label information of an IBM standard-labeled tape volume under the OS/390 environment. See the SAS documentation for this operating environment for more information.
TIMEPLOT procedure: produces plots of one or more variables over time intervals.
TRANSPOSE procedure: transposes a data set that changes observations into variables and vice versa.
TRANTAB procedure: creates, edits, and displays customized translation tables.
UNIVARIATE procedure: computes descriptive statistics (including quantiles), confidence intervals, and robust estimates for numeric variables. Provides detail on the distribution of numeric variables, which include tests for normality, plots to illustrate the distribution, frequency tables, and tests of location.

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