Well, I took a couple of minutes at lunch today and tried it out.

I put a very short SAS program into a file called 'this is a long file name.sas' and tried to run it.

Issuing SAS THIS IS A LONG FILE NAME just got me a bunch of error messages. Issuing SAS "THIS IS A LONG FILE NAME" ran the program. And the resulting log showed up in explorer as "this is a long file name.log".

The office uses Win95, not NT, but I wouldn't expect the results to be *vastly* different.

John Whittington wrote in message <3.0.1.32.20000114010328.00740478@pop3.powernet.co.uk>... >At 00:31 14/01/00 GMT, Lou Pogoda wrote: > >>DOS may be "stupid" but it's not quite that stupid. > >Indeed > >>If you do a DIR, you'll see the file listed as THISIS~1. But if you open >>windows explorer and look at the file name there, you'll see it listed as >>"this is a long file name" (without the quotes, of course). > >You don't even have to do that, actually. Using Don's filename, I create a >diddy file, and herewith the DOS DIR listing: > > Volume in drive C has no label > Volume Serial Number is 263B-15ED > Directory of C:\temp3 > >. <DIR> 09/01/97 15:39 . >.. <DIR> 09/01/97 15:39 .. >HBSPHY~1 LOG 22 14/01/00 0:54 HBSPHYSQ211.LOG > 1 file(s) 22 bytes > 2 dir(s) 426,868,736 bytes free > >... the long filename is there as well as the truncated short one. > >>So, I'm guessing here (I'm at home and don't have SAS on this machine) but a >>couple of possibilities come to mind: >>1. The file really does have the name HBSPHYSQ211.LOG, it just doesn't show >>up that way on a DOS directory command > >That certainly is my suspicion. The fact that it was being called >HBSPHY~2.log strongly suggests that this is a 'short-form truncation' of a >long filename of which DOS *is* aware. > >... that's how I se it, anyway! > >Regards, > > >John > >---------------------------------------------------------------- >Dr John Whittington, Voice: +44 (0) 1296 730225 >Mediscience Services Fax: +44 (0) 1296 738893 >Twyford Manor, Twyford, E-mail: John.W@mediscience.co.uk >Buckingham MK18 4EL, UK mediscience@compuserve.com >----------------------------------------------------------------