Date:         Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:00:30 -0400
Reply-To:     Gerhard Hellriegel <ghellrieg@T-ONLINE.DE>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Gerhard Hellriegel <ghellrieg@T-ONLINE.DE>
Subject:      Re: Can data be read directly from a CD?

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:42:46 -0500, Aldi Kraja <aldi@WUBIOS.WUSTL.EDU>
wrote:

>Good morning,
>
>Is there a way to read data provided in ASCII format from a CD? Or
>better is there  a way SAS will recognize a CD as a storage place from
>where can be retrieved information? I am asking this question, because
>each CD has about 0.7 GB data, and I want to transfer data directly in
>SAS format into the hard drive of the system. My concern is if I am
>going to damage the CDs if I try the regular way of reading data with
>FILENAME sample "F:\data1.kot"; and INFILE sample ...?
>TIA,
>Aldi
>
>--

Try it out! There is no doubt about that: it will work!
There is no way to destroy a CD by reading it! Even a CD burner cannot
overwrite data on a CD-ROM! If you use a CD-ROM drive, there is no way to
destroy the CD, except by a physical damage! I once read, that the very
fast CD-ROM drives might destroy CDs if the material is bad, especially
those not-circular CDs which you can get sometimes, but that seems to be
very exotic...