Wednesday 30 September 2009

NOTE: SAS Editor Abbreviations - Create Your Own

One of the links recommended on our blog (if you scroll down far enough!) is SAScommunity.org. The site describes itself as a collaborative online community for SAS® users worldwide. It forms an ever-growing repository of good SAS information.

The home page features a tip of the day from a variety of respected SAS practitioners. Yesterday's tip from Art Carpenter caught my eye:
In the Enhanced Editor it is possible to generate a standard block of code or text using a simple abbreviation. Similar to the complete-the-text feature found in MSWord and other word processors, these abbreviations are easy to create. While in the Editor go to [tools] => [add abbreviation].
Art's tip applies to the classic SAS display manager. For details on how to do the same in Enterprise Guide, and how to delete abbreviations(!), see Chris Hemedinger's SAScommunity posting.

This tip is useful for blocks of text you use repeatedly. A standard comment header block immediately comes to mind. I'm sure you can think of many others.
[This post was corrected and augmented 30-Sept-2009]