on a windows system

execute a cmd command and do

a dir /s/b c:\ > c:\mydrive.txt

This dumps a listing of the folders and files to a flat file that can be read in with SAS.

if you want hidden files at the /a:h just after the /s/b

If you want just folders do a dir /a:d/s/b > c:\myfolders.txt

This dumps a listing of the folders to a flat file that can be read in with SAS.

You can probably pipe this in as well...

If you do not want the whole say you wan stuff starting under c: \partridge specify that instead of c:\

Good luck....

On Feb 29, 4:54 pm, Charles_S_Patri...@PRODIGY.NET (Charles Patridge) wrote: > To SAS-Lers, > > I am looking for some PERL (Regular) expression that will be > able to identify the following strings as part of a > file name and/or directory name - > > ie under windows, files could be named as > > myfile01 070605.txt > myfile0120080103.tst > myfile01 2007_8_23.dif > myfile01January 3, 2008.doc > > My task is to find the root ('myfile01') of these files where > the root could be any string (numeric / character combined) > > AND > > then pull off the last portion of the file name and/or > directory name and determine if that is some form of a date > such as: > > a.Yymmdd "070605" > b.yyyymmdd "20080103" > c.2007_8_23 > d.Text dates: "January 3, 2008" > > This appears to be a good example of using PERL (regular expressions), > or maybe brute force to determine what the root is, character by > character and checking against the entire set of records > to see if the root is consistent across all entries. > > It will be assumed that the root will always be the first > part of the file name, and the date portion will be the last > part of the file name. > > I will also need to determine if the date portion is in fact > some kind of date naming convention such as listed above > and probably more variations as well. > > Any help would be appreciated - I am going to start on > this over the weekend. > > Thanks for any assistance or suggestions in advance, > > Regards, > Charles Patridge > > Email: Charles_S_Patridge {at} prodigy [dot] net