sas.get(library, member, variables=<<see below>>, ifs=<<see below>>,
     format.library=library, id=<<see below>>, dates="sas", keep.log=T,
     log.file="_temp_.log", macro="sas_get", macro.dir=<<see below>>,
     data.frame.out=T, clean.up=T, quiet=F, temp=tempfile("SaS"))

library:

character string naming the directory in which the the dataset is kept.

member:

character string giving the second part of the two part SAS dataset name. (The first part is irrelevant here - it is mapped to the UNIX directory name.)

variables:

vector of character strings naming the variables in the SAS dataset. The S-PLUS dataset will contain only those variables from the SAS dataset. To get all of the variables (the default), an empty string may be given. It is a fatal error if any one of the variables is not in the SAS dataset. You can use sas.contents to get the variables in the SAS dataset.

ifs:

a vector of character strings, each containing one SAS "subsetting if" statement. These will be used to extract a subset of the observations in the SAS dataset.

format.library:

The UNIX directory containing the file formats.sct, which contains the definitions of the user defined formats used in this dataset. By default, we look for the formats in the same directory as the data. N.B. The user defined formats must be available (so SAS can read the data), but they are not used by this version of sas.get.

id:

The name of the variable to be used as the row names of the S-PLUS dataset. (if data.frame.out is FALSE, this will be the attribute "id" of the S-PLUS dataset.) By default, all variables are left in.

dates:

One of the character strings "sas", "yearfrac", "yearfrac2", "yymmdd". If a SAS variable has a date format (one of "DATE", "MMDDYY", "YYMMDD", "DDMMYY", "YYQ", "MONYY", "JULIAN"), it will be converted to the format specified by dates before being given to S-PLUS. "sas" gives days from 1/1/1960, "yearfrac" gives days from 1/1/1900 divided by 365.25, "yearfrac2" gives year plus fraction of current year, and "yymmdd" gives a 6 digit number YYMMDD (year%%100, month, day). Note that S-PLUS will store these as double precision numbers, not as character strings.

keep.log:

logical flag: if FALSE, delete the SAS log file upon completion.

log.file:

the name of the SAS log file.

macro:

the SAS macro called by S-PLUS. You may want to fiddle with this if you know what you are doing.

macro.dir:

the directory in which the SAS macro is kept. By default it is $SHOME/cmd.

data.frame.out:

logical flag: if TRUE, the return value will be an S-PLUS data frame, otherwise it will be a list.

clean.up:

logical flag: if TRUE, remove all temporary files when finished. You may want to keep these while debugging the SAS macro.

quiet:

logical flag: if FALSE, show the contents of the SAS log file if there has been an error. The log file is displayed under control of the program named in S-PLUS option pager.

temp:

the prefix to use for the temporary files. Two characters will be added to this, the resulting name must fit on your file system.

If data.frame.out is FALSE, the output will be a list of vectors, each containing a variable from the SAS dataset. If id was specified, that element of the list will be used as the id attribute of the entire list.

SAS Institute Inc. (1988). SASO Technical Report P-176, Using the SASO System, Release 6.03, under UNIXO Operating Systems and Derivatives. SAS Institute Inc., Cary, North Carolina.

SAS Institute Inc. (1985). SASO Introductory Guide. Third Edition. SAS Institute Inc., Cary, North Carolina.

sas.contents("saslib", "mice")
[1] "dose  "  "ld50  "  "strain"  "lab_no"
attr(, "n"):
[1] 117
mice <- sas.get("saslib", mem="mice", var=c("dose", "strain", "ld50"))
plot(mice$dose, mice$ld50)

nude.mice <- sas.get(lib=unix("echo $HOME/saslib"), mem="mice",
        ifs="if strain='nude'")

nude.mice.dl <- sas.get(lib=unix("echo $HOME/saslib"), mem="mice",
        var=c("dose", "ld50"), ifs="if strain='nude'")