Date:         Thu, 18 Feb 1999 17:03:34 -0500
Reply-To:     HERMANS1 <HERMANS1@WESTAT.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
From:         HERMANS1 <HERMANS1@WESTAT.COM>
Subject:      Re: Using SAS datasets with Unix .Z compression
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

BTW has anyone tested reading SAS xport (AKA transport) files through a Unix
pipe?  Sig
 
____________________Reply Separator____________________
Subject:    Using SAS datasets with Unix .Z compression
Author: "Don S. Rogers" <drogers@SUNSRV2.PSTC.BROWN.EDU>
Date:       2/18/99 4:26 PM
 
I support a department of users using SAS 6.12 in Unix in batch mode.
Many of these users want to use SAS datasets that are supplied or
maintained in a compressed form, using the Unix 'compress' utility (which
produces *.Z files).  So, the datasets in questions are typically
dataset.ssd01.Z, which we'd rather keep compressed at all times.
 
My question is this:
Is there a way to write a program to read in these .Z SAS datasets without
uncompressing them?  The SAS Institute told me I need to uncompress the
dataset first (either at the command line or with a few lines of SAS code
that does the same thing) before using the dataset in a meaningful way.
Does anyone disagree, and if so, how would we go about reading that .Z
data?
 
Note: we have been able to read .Z _raw_ data, with 'pipe zcat' included
in the program, but we haven't been able to make this work with .Z
compressed SAS system datasets.
 
Thanks!
 
-- Don
 
                        Don S. Rogers
                        Department Computing Coordinator
 
                        Brown University
                        Sociology Department
                        SSRL    Social Science Research Lab
                        PSTC    Population Studies and
                                Training Center
 
                        Don_Rogers@brown.edu
                        http://sunsrv2.pstc.brown.edu/~ssrl
                        phone 401.863.2550