Boy are you exercising old synapses....

SAS 5.18 sequential was called 'TAPE' format in the documentation. I don't know that there was information on how to read with other software in the documentation. My recollection is that the TAPE format actually stored the data in a fixed-block orientation, so you might be able to unscramble some of it. If your colleague has a CONTENTS printout of the dataset, you are in much better stead.

My old experience with MVS was that if the originator just copied (with MVS utilities) a SAS (default) dataset to another place, all of the binary, direct access, pointers were toast, as the pointers were to hardware sectors. CMS, with it's mini-disks, may be different.

There are still some V5 systems on mainframes; perhaps a user there can shed more definitive light.

Doc

"F.J. Kelley" wrote:

> I think I know the answer to this one, but one never knows what will turn > up ... > > A faculty member was given a file which (supposedly) had some data he > needed on it. The file was sent from another institution and their folks > had been unable to do anything with it. > It appears to be a SAS V5 file, probably in sequential format. I can't be > sure, but I believe it was written on a CMS system. When the original > institution shut down their mainframe, the data was copied (they _did_ > preserve the binary attributes). Of course there is no end-of-record, so > a binary upload to a mainframe results in a single line. vi doesn't much > care for it either, however the Cygnus hex editor on my NT box seems to > have no problems. And the file appears to be EBCDIC hex. I've looked > over the old "SAS Programmer's Guide (V5)" but can't seem to find info re > the structure of a sequential file (I think the SAS 82 version had that, > but it _has_ been a while). My feeling is that the data may well be > there, but the file is trash. Any thoughts? --Joe > (oh yes, I believe this was written with V5 SAS, based on the "85.18" > string in the first 80 chars)

-- Lawrence H. ('Doc') Muhlbaier muhlb001@mc.duke.edu Assistant Research Professor Duke University Medical Center 919-668-8774 (office) DUMC 3865 919-383-0595 (home) Durham, NC 27710-7510 919-668-7057 (FAX)