The SAS code at this site is being made available to anyone who can figure out how it works and what it is good for.  Neither the author (usually, but not always, John Blodgett), OSEDA  or the Missouri Census Data Center take any responsibility regarding the suitability or reliability of the software.  Use at your own risk!  We do encourage feedback from users who have detected problems with the software and we will make attempts to correct any known errors.

Redistribution of the code or inclusion in other software products is permitted provided that adequate attribution of the original authors is maintained within the source code.

This code is developed within a coding environment that assumes the presence of certain tools and libraries.  The code will not worked when moved to a different environment unless these environment modules are replicated in the new environment.  There are 3 major categories of such modules:

1. SAS macro references.  You may encounter code within a module such as %cnvtdlm(setin=<someset>,labels=1)    that will be flagged as an apparent unresolved macro reference.  We use SAS system options mautosource and sysautos so that SAS will always search for such unresolved macro references in our local macro library (and then in the standard macro libraries provided by SAS Institute).  In order to make this problem go away when transporting the code to your site, you need to transfer the corresponding SAS macro source code to your site and then make it available to your environment.  You can access the OSEDA/MCDC SAS macro library at http://mcdc2.missouri.edu/sasmacro

This page will present you with an alphabetical index listing of all the modules in the library (directory). To find the module for the unresolved macro just look for a file with the same name as the macro and an extension of ".sas". So, for example, to get the source code for the %cnvtdlm macro you would look for a file named cnvtdlm.sas . You need to transfer this file to your local system. If you have your own local autocall macro library you can store the code in a module with the same name (i.e., cnvtdlm.sas) and it should then be available at your site.  Or, you can save the file to any file on your system and add a line of code to your SAS program to include the file prior to invoking it.  This might look something like: %include "c:\mymacs\cnvtdlm.sas".   A third alternative would be to actually include the macro code directly in your program prior to invoking the macro.  This may well be the best option for short macros.  You can typically do this with copy and paste without need to do a file transfer.
 
2. %include sascode(<module>) references.   In addition to the macro library, we maintain a separate library of non macro SAS formats.  This are typically small modules and are often templates that are used to create customized code.  But occasionally, we will directly access one of these modules in another SAS program.    The strategy for getting this code over to your local environment is similar to what you have to do with macro code.  Here the library is sascode instead of sasmacro so the URL to access the directory is http://mcdc2.missouri.edu/sascode .

 As with the macro library directory, you need to look for the file with the name of the module being referenced and with a ".sas" extension.  For example, if the program you are trying to run contained the statement
   %include sascode(doitloop);
then you would look for a file named doitloop.sas.  As with the macro library module, you could either transfer this file to your system and change the %include statement to reference your local copy, or you could do a simple copy-paste to insert the code directly into your program.
   Important note for users having trouble browsing .sas files:  You may have trouble trying to simply use your browser to view these .sas files, because your browser (probably MS Internet Explorer) wants to start up a local SAS session to process the file, rather than letting you view/download the file.   An alternate way to access these files that should avoid this problem is to use our uexplore software to traverse these directories.  Using this tool is primarily intended to provide you with access to our SAS data holding, but it will also permit access to many "plain text"  files using a simple interface program that will hide the file extension from your browser.   To access the sascode directory via uexplore the URL would be
http://mcdc2.missouri.edu/cgi-bin/uexplore?/pub/sascode/@secure .   Change "sascode" to "sasmacro" here and you will be viewing the SAS macro library.  The directory will look different -- there may even be some descriptive text associated with some of the modules to help those who are "shopping" for modules.
 Note that we are providing you with all references to the web site mcdc2.missouri.edu  and to directories in the /pub area.  If you have used our site over recent years, you were accessing these modules using  URLs such as http://www.oseda.missouri.edu/cgi-bin/uexplore?/mscdc/sascode@secure .  This URL will still works, but it points to a server where we have copies of our software, but where we may not be maintaining it.  So you are strongly advised to always look for the copies on the mcdc2 server.

As an aside for those interested in how we automate some of our local SAS environment you might want to look at the module autoexec8.sas  in the sascode directory.  This is the module that we automatically execute at the start of each SAS job, which handles things such as the automatic access to our macro and SAS formats libraries.
 

3. SAS format codes.   This may be the most common problem you'll incur when using our software.  We really like to use permanent SAS format codes, for all sort of things beyond just providing simple value labels for PROC FREQ, etc.  We use them a lot as a tool for doing table lookup, in conjunction with the put function.   Typically, you will encounter a line of code such as

      cntyname=put(county,$county.);
and you will get an error message saying that SAS was unable to find the format module $county.  In our environment we have compiled a great many such format modules and stored them in a SAS formats catalog and have used the system option fmatsearch to make those formats accessible to our programs.  Specifically, in our autoexec8.sas module (mentioned above) we have the lines:
     libname  sasctlgs  '/pub/sasctlgs' access=readonly;
     options fmtsearch=(work sasctlgs sasuser);
which tells SAS to look for unresolved format references first in work.formats (this is where formats that have been created in the current program get stored by default) and then in sasctlgs.formats -- which is where we have stored all our compiled formats.   You should not attempt to access our formats catalog, but what you can do is reference the SAS source modules corresponding to each of our formats.  You can then use these source modules in order to create the format codes (possibly with editing to suit your needs) at your site.   So, for example, to use our $county format code (which takes 5-character FIPS county codes as arguments and returns the name of the county corresponding to that code as the label) you would access the source code by going to http://mcdc2.missouri.edu/sasfmats/ and then selecting the file Scounty.sas from the directory listing.  (You can also add  "Scounty.sas" to the URL shown to go directly to the source code for $county.  Note the uppercase "S" in the filename.  This is the UNIX substitute for the "$" symbol that indicate a character type format (i.e. a format that works on character type arguments.)  This naming convention has its origins in the MVS environment where we first created many of these format modules.  On MVS they were all stored in a format library PDS and the member names actually began with $ characters (somewhere in the world there may still exist something called $6386.PUBLIC.SASMACRO($COUNTY) ).
    To use this format code on your system download the source file to your system and then use it as input to the SAS format procedure.   All these format modules consist of extensive comments to document the codes and then a single proc format VALUE statement.   To use $county in a program  at your site,  you should add the following code to your program (prior to the first step in your job that references the format code):
    proc format;
     %include 'c:\myformats\Scounty.sas' ;
     run;
This assumes that you transferred the source code to the file as shown on your Windows system.  You can stored the code anywhere you want to, of course.   You can also bypass the file transfer option and just browse the format source module and use copy-paste to insert the format value statement directly into your program (in place of the %include statement as shown in the above sample).   Of course, if you think you would like to use the format in many or any programs at your site, you should consider not only copying the source module, but actually saving the compiled version in a permanent formats catalog and setting options (read about the fmtsearch SAS system option if you are not familiar with it).

The purpose of this document is to provide answers to the frequently asked questions regarding the SAS code that people obtain from our site.   In doing so, we have pointed you to several critical shared resource libraries that are referenced by many of our other various application modules.    The latter SAS programs are distributed about the data archive, which is organized primarily based on entities we call filetypes.   A filetype is just a broad category of data, such as 1990 Summary Tape File 3, or 2000 Public Law 94.   Most of the SAS programs available on our site are stored in subdirectories named Tools within filetype subdirectories.   So, if you are looking for code related to the 2000 Public Law 94-171 data files, you would want to look at either http://mcdc2.missouri.edu/data/pl942000/Tools/  or (using our uexplore application, which can sometimes provide useful guidance in the form of short file descriptions)  http://mcdc2.missouri.edu/cgi-bin/uexplore?/pub/data//pl942000@secure .  Of course, how would you even know there was such a filetype directory as pl942000 (maybe it was called just pl94 or pl94-171)?  To see the list of current filetypes you should point uexplore one directory level higher using the URL http://mcdc2.missouri.edu/cgi-bin/uexplore?/pub/data/@secure .   Finally, to confuse matters just a little bit more, you should be aware that we are currently (June, 2001) running two versions of the uexplore software, on two different servers - the old one and the new one.  Our goal is to convert all or most of our data holdings over to the new server by the end of this summer.  But for now, we still have good data on the old server that is not yet available on the newer, faster one (mcdc2).  To access the data on the old server use the URL http://www.oseda.missouri.edu/cgi-bin/uexplore?/mscdc/data@secure or go to the author's home page (http://oseda.missouri.edu/jgb) and look at the links in the second row.