Feng Jiang

Writing

Run R Code in SAS

Updated

SAS can run R code inside a SAS program, but only after R support is enabled. The setup has two parts: turn on R integration in SAS, and tell SAS where R is installed.

Set Up R Support in SAS

First, launch SAS with R support enabled. You can do this in either of two ways:

  • Add -RLANG to the SAS command line.
  • Add -RLANG to the end of the SAS configuration file, sasv9.cfg.

Second, tell SAS where to find R. You can do this in either of two ways:

  • Add options set=R_HOME='C:\Program Files\R\R-x.y.z'; to autoexec.sas.
  • Add -SET R_HOME "C:\Program Files\R\R-x.y.z" to the end of sasv9.cfg.

Change the R path to match the version installed on your machine.

After that, run proc options option=RLANG; run; to confirm that R support is enabled in SAS.

If you prefer not to edit sasv9.cfg, the simplest setup is:

  1. Add -RLANG to the SAS command line.
  2. Add the following two lines to autoexec.sas:
    • options set=R_HOME='C:\Program Files\R\R-x.y.z'; Change this path to match your R installation.
    • proc options option=RLANG; run; This lets you confirm at startup that SAS is ready to run R.

Run R Code Through PROC IML

After SAS is configured with R support, you can run R code through PROC IML. The basic pattern is to open a submit / R block, write the R code inside that block, and then return to SAS.

For example, the following SAS program creates a small data frame in R and then imports it back into SAS:

proc iml;
  submit / R;
    df = data.frame(x = 1:3, y = c("a", "b", "c"))
  endsubmit;
  run ImportDataSetFromR("sas_data", "df");
run;

If you only need to run analysis in R and inspect the printed output, the submit / R block may be enough. If you need to continue working with the result in SAS, use ImportDataSetFromR() to bring an R object back as a SAS dataset.

The key setup requirements are -RLANG, which enables R integration, and R_HOME, which tells SAS where R is installed. Once both are set, the submit / R block gives SAS a direct way to call R and bring results back into the SAS session.