Concepts

About External Text Files

External text files are files that you have stored outside of SAS. They can be created in several different ways. Four common methods are as follows :

• save the contents of the OUTPUT or LOG window to an external file with the FILE command

• direct the output from SAS procedures to an external file using the PRINTTO procedure and a FILENAME statement

• direct the output from a SAS data step to an external file using the FILE and PUT statements

• create a text file from another software application such as a text editor or a spreadsheet program.

Note: Depending on the operating environment and the method used to generate the file, external text files may contain carriage-control characters . For more information on carriage -control characters, see the NOCC option on page 1150.

You can use a FILENAME statement or host command to specify a fileref that points to the location of the external text file that you want to print. This external file serves as the input file for the GPRINT procedure.