SAS Extension for Visual Studio Code

Welcome to the SAS Extension for Visual Studio Code! This extension provides support for the SAS language, including the following features:

• SAS Extension for Visual Studio Code
  • Installation
  • Features
    • SAS Syntax Highlighting
    • Color Themes
    • Code Completion
    • Pop-up Syntax Help
    • Snippets
    • Code Folding and Code Outline
    • Configuring the SAS Extension
    • Running SAS Code
  • Support
    • SAS Communities
    • SAS Programming Documentation
    • FAQs
    • GitHub Issues
  • Contributing to the SAS Extension
  • License

Installation

To install the SAS extension, open the Extensions view by clicking the Extensions icon in the Activity Bar on the left side of the Visual Studio Code window. Search for the 'Official' SAS extension, and click the Install button. Once the installation is complete, the Install button changes to the Manage button.

Features

SAS Syntax Highlighting

The SAS extension highlights these syntax elements in your program, just as they would appear in a SAS editor:

• Global statements
• SAS procedures
• SAS procedure statements
• Data step definition
• Data step statements
• SAS data sets
• Macro definition
• Macro statements
• Functions
• CALL routines
• Formats and informats
• Macro variables
• SAS colors
• Style elements and style attributes
• Comment
• Various constants
• Options, enumerated option values, sub-options and sub-option values for various procedure definitions and statements

Color Themes

You can choose among three SAS-related color themes that control the color of the application and syntax elements. The SAS Light, SAS Dark and SAS High Contrast options mirror the themes available in SAS Studio.

To specify the color theme:

• Select File > Preferences > Color Theme and select the theme, by name. The image below demonstrates the process changing from SAS Light to SAS Dark.

Code Completion

The SAS extension includes automatic code completion and pop-up syntax help for SAS keywords. The autocomplete, or code completion, feature in the code editor can predict the next word that you want to enter in your SAS program. See code completion in action below.

To use the autocomplete feature:

• Start typing a valid SAS keyboard. Scroll through the pop-up list of suggested keywords by using your mouse or the up and down arrow keys.

Pop-up Syntax Help

The syntax help gets you started with a hint about the syntax or a brief description of the keyword. You can get additional help by clicking the links in the syntax help window.

To view the syntax help:

• Move the mouse pointer over a valid SAS keyword in the code.

In the following example, the help panel displays syntax help for the DATA= option in the PROC PRINT statement.

Tip: Click the links in the syntax help window to navigate to the SAS online help.

Snippets

Snippets are lines of commonly used code or text that you can insert into your program. The SAS extension includes snippets for SAS functions and procedures to facilitate writing your SAS programs.

To access the list of snippets for a function or procedure:

• Type the name of a function or procedure in your SAS program. This example shows a snippet for the PROC DS2.

Code Folding and Code Outline

Regions of code are identified in your SAS program as blocks of code that can be collapsed and expanded. You can also view an outline of your program that identifies DATA steps, procedures, macro sections, and user-defined regions of code.

Tip: You can define a custom region by adding /*region*/ and /*endregion*/ tags to the start and end of the block of code.

Configuring the SAS Extension

Before running SAS code, you must configure the SAS extension to access a SAS Viya server. You must license SAS Viya to run SAS code.

To configure the SAS extension, open the Settings editor for the SAS extension by selecting File > Preferences > Settings. Expand the Extensions folder and select SAS.

Session - General General parameter settings for the extension

Session - Password authentication To authenticate with password, specify client ID, client secret, and user name.

Session - Token authentication To authenticate with an access token, specify the full path for a token file.

For more information about the authentication process, please see the blog post Authentication to SAS Viya: a couple of approaches.

Running SAS Code

After configuring the SAS extension for your SAS environment, run your SAS program and view the log and results.

To run a SAS program:

1. Click Run (running man icon) in the upper right corner of your SAS program window.

   1.a. If prompted, enter your password (for password authentication).

2. The results are displayed in the application.

3. The SAS output log and error information are displayed in the applicaiton.

To run a piece of SAS code:

1. Select a piece of code in your SAS program
2. Open context menu and select Run Selected SAS Code

Notes:

• A new session must be created the first time you run SAS code. Connection time will vary depending on the server connection.
• Currently, only HTML output is supported. By default, the ODS HTML5 statement is added to the submitted code. Clear the Get ODS HTML5 Output option in the Settings editor for the SAS extension to disable this output.
• When you click Run, the code in the active tab in the editor is submitted. Make sure that the correct tab is active when you run your program.
• To reset your connection to the SAS Viya server, run the Close current session command in VS code or click the Close current session button next to the Run button.

Support

SAS Communities

Ask, Find, and Share on the VS Code SAS Extension on the SAS Programmers Community site.

SAS Programming Documentation

SAS Programming documentation

FAQs

Please check the FAQ page for some common questions.

GitHub Issues

See the SUPPORT.md file for information on how to open an issue against this repository.

Contributing to the SAS Extension

We welcome your contributions! Please read CONTRIBUTING.md for details on how to submit contributions to this project.

License

This project is subject to the SAS Code Extension Terms, a copy of which is included as Code_Extension_Agreement.pdf