Dear SAS-L -

This is my follow-up to an offline conversation on filename FTP recfm and lrecl options, all comments of course welcome:

The documentation says that in filename ftp recfm=f is the same as the binary option, it is fixed in the sense that there are no embedded line delimiters, not unlike fixed files on MVS:

<v9 sasdoc> FTP Options

BINARY is fixed-record format. Thus, all records are of size LRECL with no line delimiters. Data is transferred in image (binary) mode.

The BINARY option overrides the value of RECFM= in the FILENAME FTP statement, if specified, and forces a binary transfer.

Alias: RECFM=F Interaction: If you specify the BINARY option and the S370V or S370VS option, then SAS ignores the BINARY option. ..... RECFM=recfm where recfm is one of three record formats:

F is fixed-record format. Thus, all records are of size LRECL with no line delimiters. Data is transferred in image (binary) mode.

Alias: BINARY The BINARY option overrides the value of RECFM= in the FILENAME FTP statement, if specified, and forces a binary transfer.

S is stream-record format. Data is transferred in image (binary) mode.

Interaction: The amount of data that is read is controlled by the current LRECL value or by the value of the NBYTE= variable in the INFILE statement. The NBYTE= option specifies a variable that is equal to the amount of data to be read. This amount must be less than or equal to LRECL. See Also: The NBYTE= option in the INFILE statement.

V is variable-record format (the default). In this format, records have varying lengths, and they are transferred in text (stream) mode. </v9 sasdoc>

One may use different lrecl settings in the filename statements, setting lrecl=4096 on an 18 mg transfer created a 4% performance improvement over the default lrecl=256.

Use recfm=v for a text transfer. Recfm=s is for binary stream and I believe is used for direct connection of applications through filename socket/url/http/and ftp. I imagine it enables the use of third party apps, like visual basic, to be used within SAS over the Internet, but I have not used it in this manner and am unsure.

Paul Choate DDS Data Extraction (916) 654-2160