SAS: Read files in folder and compile list of filenames

In a prvious post, “Filename: Create SAS dataset of folder hierarchical structure and file list“, I have described a way to extract filenames in a folder or subfolder to a file. Here is a different way of doing it.

Reference: Reading and Processing the Contents of a Directory by Ben Cochran, The Bedford Group, Raleigh, NC. https://www.mwsug.org/proceedings/2012/S1/MWSUG-2012-S128.pdf

The following SAS codes get the filenames from L:\DaraFiles directory and pass them to a macro variable called varlist.

%let varlist =;
data null;
rc =filename("mydir", "L:\DataFiles");
did = dopen("mydir");
if did > 0 then do;
num =dnum(did);
do i = 1 to num;
fname =dread (did, i );
put fname = ;
call symput('varlist', trim(resolve('&varlist'))||' '||trim(fname));
end;
end;
run;
%put &varlist.;

Key Functions:

• filename: assign the directory to a alias.
• dopen: open the directory and get the directory identifier;
• dnum: get the number of member in the directory;
• dread: get the filenname of the directory member;