Benjamin,

Regarding automatical creation of subdirectories, if possible a whole path at once, I am rather sure that creating more than one at a time is not possible. You should indeed issue separate commands to do so. However, you actually may say { MD sub1\sub2 } if sub1 already exists. Furthermore, if a directory already exists and you don't test for that (in some way) an MD command doesn't do any harm either (except for some error report). However, a directory name specified already may exist as a file name. In that case an MD command doesn't do any harm either, but the desired directory can not be created, unless the file is renamed or (re)moved.

A very quick way for testing the existence of a subdirectory in DOS is: IF EXIST SubdPath\NUL ECHO This subdirectory or complete path exists However, I've noticed years ago already that this only works correctly on local drives, not on some network drives. So I wrote (compiled) batch files for testing the existence of some name as a file or directory, using attemps to create a dummy file in a directory. These work correctly on all kinds of drives, AFAIK. I have them somewhere at home. If you are interested to use them, tell me. On the other hand there may be other similar freeware DOS utilities available.

Regards - Jim. -- Y. (Jim) Groeneveld, MSc IMRO TRAMARKO tel. +31 412 407 070 senior statistician, P.O. Box 1 fax. +31 412 407 080 head IT department 5350 AA BERGHEM IMRO TRAMARKO: a CRO J.Groeneveld@ITGroups.com the Netherlands in clinical research

It is my job to keep my computer at work, but its job is to reveal my work.

> -----Original Message----- > From: Benjamin Guralnik [SMTP:guralnik@BEZEQINT.NET] > Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2000 11:13 PM > To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU > Subject: Create a directory from SAS > > Hello SAS-L, > > Is anybody aware of any convenient method of creating a directory from a > SAS > program? I'm writing a setup utility that is supposed to create a new > directory, but unfortunately, the "mkdir" DOS command can create only one > directory at a time, despite its syntax specification: > > MKDIR [drive:]path > MD [drive]path > > That is, to create c:\newdir\newdir2 (assuming that both does not yet > exist), you'd have to submit: > MD c:\newdir > MD c:\newdir\newdir2 > > Now, the question is, how would you do this from SAS. CALL SYSTEM("dos > command") seems fine for this task. You split the string containing the > path > at every concurrency of a backslash "\", then check to see whether the > path > exists up to this point, and create it if it doesn't. > > The problem is, I haven't found yet a way to check the DOSERROR or > DOSEXITCODE of a "cd <path>" command. Or is there any elegant > "exists(filename|pathname)" SCL approach? > > Moreover, I'd like that this newly created directory would be > automatically > assigned at startup. Now I have to tell the user to go to "Libraries", > select the appropriate lib, and check the "assign at startup" option under > Modify Library. Is there any way to do this programmatically? > > Thanks in advance, > Benjamin