[R] How to read only ten rows from a SAS dataset (read.ssd)?

[johannes rara]

Thanks David,

Yes, my code really works (using the foreign package), but when
handling a SAS file which contains > 500 000 rows and > 100 cols it is
not really fun anymore. My intention was do some preliminary research
from the data and the whole dataset was not needed.

After all, I could not find a possibility to get limited amount of
rows from a dataset when importing data to R.

-J

2010/10/19 David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net>:
>
> On Oct 19, 2010, at 6:47 AM, johannes rara wrote:
>
>> I'm trying to read SAS datasets on Windows:
>>
>> sashome <- "C:/Program Files/SAS/SAS 9.1"
>> fold <- "C:/temp"
>> g <- read.ssd(fold, "sasfile", sascmd = file.path(sashome, "sas.exe"))
>
> And this was successful?
>
>>
>> How to get only e.g first ten rows into R?
>
> Presumably you also entered require(foreign) if you had success. Looking at
> the help page, we see no parameter that would effect such a result. So just
> type:
>
> read.ssd
>
> You see that this function's code is available and if you know SAS, you
> should be able to insert the needed line that would limit the dataset length
> to only ten lines. I'm not being coy. I would probably had further
> suggestions 20 years ago when I was using SAS.
>
> There is a function sas.get in package Hmisc that offers more extensive
> control, but it is not clear to me on looking at the parameters whether your
> particular request would be easily accommodated. The ifs= parameter would
> appear to be the most promising candidate to me. It appears that these file
> formats are accepted:
> sasds.suffix <- c("sd2", "sd7", "ssd01", "ssd02", "ssd03",
>        "ssd04", "sas7bdat")
>
>
> Also, since the use of read.ssd implies that you have a working copy of SAS,
> then another option is simply exporting a file in the format of your choice?
> The SAS XPT format seems to be well handled by external programs.
>
>
> --
> David.
>>
>> -J
>>
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>
> David Winsemius, MD
> West Hartford, CT
>
>