SAS Programming Professionals,
Did you know that you can avoid those occasional,
sporadic, annoying file lock wait errors on SAS for Windows by using a simple
LIBNAME option?
Occasionally on
SAS for Windows, the Microsoft DFS replication process unintentionally causes a
lock on SAS data sets. SAS does not wait
for the lock to be released on the SAS data set and displays an error in the
SAS log. For Example:
libname timing "r:\path"
;
Proc sort
data = timing.studyfil;
by fncl_ast_id;
run;
…could possibly
produce the following error:
ERROR:
A lock is not available for TIMING.STUDYFIL.DATA.
This happens because locks from third party software
applications are not automatically checked by SAS’s internal FILELOCKWAIT facility. This particular
error has occasionally been observed when the path to the SAS data library goes
to a network drive, not to a C-drive.
To avoid this problem, use the libname option
FILELOCKWAIT as follows:
libname
timing "r:\path"
filelockwait=10;
Note that filelockwait= is in seconds and in most cases 10 seconds is
enough. Also, don’t fret if you have never experienced this issue. It is relatively rare and has not affected
most SAS programmers. But, now you are
sufficiently armed in case you do encounter it.
---MMMMIIIIKKKKEEEE
(aka Michael A. Raithel)
Author of the new cult classic for computer programmers: It Only Hurts When I Hit <ENTER>
Print edition: http://tinyurl.com/z8bzx2e
Kindle edition: http://tinyurl.com/zypgqa7
Print edition: http://tinyurl.com/z8bzx2e
Kindle edition: http://tinyurl.com/zypgqa7
