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SAS: What is the quickest way to convert a dataset compressed in binary to compressed using char or vice versa?

I have a dataset sitting on a local drive and I would like to convert it to char compress from binary compressed (or vice versa).

data local.dataset1(compress=c);
set local.dataset1;
run;


This is the best way I know. Is there a faster way?

1 Answer
1

For a single data set with no indices, yes, I would consider your data step the best way to rebuild the file.

From the COMPRESS= documentation Details section

Once a file is compressed, the setting is a permanent attribute of the file, which means that to change the setting, you must re-create the file. That is, to uncompress a file, specify COMPRESS=NO for a DATA step that copies the compressed file.

In your case, you are not uncompressing but recompressing with a different compression option (i.e. algorithm)

For the case of very large > 1/2 disk filling data sets you might get an error while rebuilding the data set -- you would need to move the original file to separate disk before rebuilding it with the different compression in the local library.

local

For the case of a data set with meta-data such as a label, passwords, generations and indices, you might want to use Proc DATASETS, COPY statement with NOCLONE option.

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