SORTSIZE

SORTSIZE

Specifies the amount of memory available to the SORT procedure

Default: 16M, but may be larger on some machines (set in the installed !SASROOT/sasv8.cfg file)

Valid in: SAS invocation, SASV8_OPTIONS environment variable, configuration file, OPTIONS statement, System Options window

UNIX specifics: value of MAX

Syntax
Details
See Also

Syntax

-SORTSIZE n|nK|nM|nG|MIN|MAX|hex

SORTSIZE=n|nK|nM|nG| MIN|MAX|hex

n|nK|nM|nG: specifies the number of bytes in multiples of 1; 1,024 (kilobytes); 1,048,576 (megabytes); and 1,073,741,824 (gigabytes), respectively. For example, a value of 8 specifies 8 bytes and a value of 3M specifies 3,145,728 bytes.
MIN: specifies 0 bytes, which indicates that there is no limit except the limitation specified by the MEMSIZE system option.
MAX: specifies 2,147,483,647 bytes. On 64-bit systems, MAX is 9,007,199,254,740,992.
hexX: specifies the number of bytes in hexadecimal notation. For example, 2DX specifies 45 bytes.

Details

The SORTSIZE option may reduce the amount of swapping the SAS System must do to sort a data set. If the SORT procedure needs more memory than you specify, it creates a temporary utility file in your SASWORK directory. The SORT procedure's algorithm can swap unneeded data more efficiently than the operating system can.

For optimal performance, set SORTSIZE to a value less than the available physical memory. It is recommended that you set SORTSIZE to a value that is at least 8M less than the value of MEMSIZE.

See Also

"The SORT Procedure" in SAS Procedures Guide
SORTDEV
SORTLIB

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Default:	16M, but may be larger on some machines (set in the installed `!SASROOT/sasv8.cfg` file)
Valid in:	SAS invocation, SASV8_OPTIONS environment variable, configuration file, OPTIONS statement, System Options window
UNIX specifics:	value of MAX