Date:         Thu, 2 Dec 2004 12:03:13 -0500
Reply-To:     "Fehd, Ronald J." <RJF2@CDC.GOV>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "Fehd, Ronald J." <RJF2@CDC.GOV>
Subject:      Re: v8.2 to v9.1: need short filename extensions
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I have become Enlightened on this subject
after a daze worth of e-mail correspondence
with both TechSupport and Little Birdies.

My Received Wisdom has been reduced to:

> The SHORTFILEEXT option existed in the LIBNAME statement in V8.

according to other e-mail it was also a global option
either of
-SHORTFILEEXT in a configuration file
or
options SHORTFILEEXT; in an autoexec

> It

the libname option

> was disabled starting in 9.0 and up to 9.1.2.

> It is again enabled for
********* [emphasis added]
read-only
********* [emphasis added]
> use in 9.1.3.
>
> For example, if you have abc.sd7 in a directory called mydir,
> and it was created via the SHORTFILEEXT option
> in an earlier release
> (prior to 9.0) you could access it in 9.1.3 as
>
> libname xyz 'mydir' shortfileext;
> data _null_; set xyz.abc; put _all_; run;
>
> I have confirmed that the global SHORTFILEEXT option
> will not be re-enabled in 9.1.3 or in subsequent releases.

note: you will not find SHORTFILEEXT in the v9.1.3 OnLineDoc.

summary for v9.1.3:
SHORTFILEEXT is no longer a global option
it is only available as a read-only option on the libname statement
which can be used to read SAS data sets with short filename extensions
created with v8.
You cannot create SAS data sets with short filename extensions via
v9.1.3.

Ron Fehd  the macro maven  CDC Atlanta GA USA RJF2 at cdc dot gov

OpSys: Win_Pro   Ver: 9.1.3 (TS1M3)