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1) You could point him at the usenet group comp.soft-sys.sas, and he can search
it using the AltaVista engine and a web client. If he is a real bit-head (like
me), there is a way to search the archive listserv maintains.
2) Syntax error, but see previous answer unless e-mail subscription info is
desired.
3) Whoowee, don't you got fun!! OK, because of the packed and signed fields,
you cannot EBCDIC->ASCII convert this stuff, you need to use the IBM370
informats (hope you run a recent version...). If your OS cannot handle the VB
records directly, it is fairly simple (several hours to a few days) for a
competent programmer to write code in a low-level language to read and re-block
the file. I've written the program in assembler for DOS and SAS for Windoze so
I expect you can find a local contractor to write it in something for your unix
box. Good luck!
Tim Berryhill - Contract Programmer and General Wizard
TWB2@PGE.COM
Frequently at Pacific Gas & Electric Co., San Francisco
The correlation coefficient between their views and
my postings is slightly less than 0
----------------------[Reply - Original Message]----------------------
Sent by:GERALD ZUCKIER <ZUCKIER@CHIME.ORG>
Hi folks. A friend asks me about UNIX access to IBM variable block tapes;
herein follows his query.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is there a way to browse the SAS-L list on specialized topics?
Heck, what is the url of the sas list?
We have an especially problem one that not even the venerable
SAS institute is able to crack. Not due to lack of expertise,
but rather because of minimal unix coverage.
The problem is quite simple, actually. We have a bunch of IBM,
labelled, Variable Block tapes with packed and signed decimal
fields that need to be read.
The label part is easy to get around, but the reading of
variable block tapes in a unix environment isn't working so
well. Neither with straight unix (i.e, the dd command), nor
with a hybrid of unix and sas (i.e., infile with a pipe, or
just an infile with a tape pointing at a tape drive with lrecl
and blksize info as part of the infile statement).
Are we asking the impossible of SAS and UNIX? SAS says "no,
it's not possible", the in-house UNIX gurus say "yes, it's
impossible". So far we are starting to side with the unix
gurus.
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