dir_ls

Generate a dataset with the names of all files in a directory or directory tree. Wildcards may be used to specify the files to be included.

%dir_ls(dir, dsn=, recur=no, lib=);

Arguments

• dir : a directory full path, or file group (possibly containing wildcards) with full path;
• recur : (option) flag of boolean type (yes/no) set to yes when search will be recursively performed in subdirectories;
• lib : (option) name of the output library; by default: empty, i.e. WORK is used.

Returns

dsn : (option) output dataset created in lib library; this dataset contains three fields, respectively:

• base for file name), and
• path for absolute path (path separator is slash '/'), and
• last for last modification data as SAS datetime;

when not set, a default dataset WORK.dir_ls is created with all the fields above.

Example

The call to the following:

%let dir=%quote(&EUSILC/library/data/);
%dir_ls(&dir*csv, dsn=test);

stores in the WORK.test dataset the list (base+path+last) of CSV files present in the dir folder.

Run macro %_example_dir_ls for more examples.

Note

1. As for now, this macro runs on Linux/Unix machines only. Consider using %file_ls on other platforms.
2. In short, this macro launches a bash (Xcmd) request based on find of the given directory.

See also

%file_ls, %dir_check, %file_name, SYSEXEC.