SAS Companion for UNIX Environments

Accessing SAS Data Files

refer to the data file directly by using its pathname in the appropriate statements (such as DATA, SET, MERGE, UPDATE, OUTPUT, and PROC).
assign a libref to the SAS data library (directory) that contains the data file and use the libref as the first level of a two-level file name.

A libref is a nickname that you can use to refer to the data library during the SAS session or job. You will probably want to use a libref when:

the data file pathname is long and must be specified several times within a program
the pathname might change. If the pathname changes, you need to change only the statement assigning the libref, not every reference to the file.
your application will be used on other platforms. Using librefs makes it easier to port an application to other operating environments.
you need to concatenate libraries. See Assigning a Libref to Several Directories (Concatenating Directories) for more information.

You can assign a libref with the LIBNAME statement or through the New Library window in the Explorer. To open the New Library window, select

File New Library
You can also use an environment variable as the libref.

After you have defined a libref, you can use the libref in one of two ways to access a permanent SAS data library:

as the first level of a two-level SAS file name:

libref.member-name
where libref is the first-level name referring to the directory where the file is stored, and member-name specifies the name of the file being read or created.
as the value of the USER= option. (See USER Data Library for details.)

For example, these SAS statements access the data file FINAL.DATA in the library in the the directory /users/myid/mydir:

libname sales '/users/myid/mydir';
data sales.final;