How to Export Data from SAS to Text File (With Examples)

You can use the PROC EXPORT statement to quickly export data from SAS to a text file.

This procedure uses the following basic syntax:

/*export data to file called my_data.txt*/
proc export data=my_data
    outfile="/home/u13181/my_data.txt"
    dbms=tab
    replace;
run;

Here’s what each line does:

data: Name of dataset to export
outfile: Location to export text file
dmbs: File format to use for export (tab is used for text files)
replace: Replace the file if it already exists

The following examples show how to use this function in practice.

Example 1: Export Dataset to Text File with Default Settings

Suppose we have the following dataset in SAS that contains information about various basketball players:

/*create dataset*/
data my_data;
    input rating points assists rebounds;
    datalines;
90 25 5 11
85 20 7 8
82 14 7 10
88 16 8 6
94 27 5 6
90 20 7 9
76 12 6 6
75 15 9 10
87 14 9 10
86 19 5 7
;
run;

/*view dataset*/
proc print data=my_data;

We can use the following code to export this dataset to a text file called my_data.txt:

/*export dataset*/
proc export data=my_data
    outfile="/home/u13181/my_data.txt"
    dbms=tab
    replace;
run;

I can then navigate to the location on my computer where I exported the file and view it:

The data in the text file matches the dataset from SAS.

Example 2: Export Dataset to Text File with Custom Settings

You can also use the delimiter and putnames arguments to change the delimiter that separates the values and remove the header row from the dataset.

For example, the following code shows how to export a SAS dataset to a text file using a semi-colon as the delimiter and no header row:

/*export dataset*/
proc export data=my_data
    outfile="/home/u13181/my_data2.txt"
    dbms=tab
    replace;
    delimiter=";";
    putnames=NO;
run;

I can then navigate to the location on my computer where I exported the file and view it: