You can use the PROC DELETE statement in SAS to delete specific files in folders.
There are two common ways to use this statement in practice:
Method 1: Use PROC DELETE to Delete One Specific Dataset
/*define path to folder*/
libname folder1 '/home/u13181/folder1/';
/*delete dataset called data1 in folder called folder1*/
proc delete data=folder1.data1;
run;
Method 2: Use PROC DELETE to Delete Multiple Datasets
/*define path to folder*/
libname folder1 '/home/u13181/folder1/';
/*delete datasets called data2 and data3 in folder called folder1*/
proc delete data=folder1.data2 folder1.data3;
run;
The following examples show how to use PROC DELETE in practice with the following folder in SAS called folder1 that contains three datasets:
Example 1: Use PROC DELETE to Delete One Specific Dataset
We can use the following syntax with PROC DELETE to delete the dataset called data1 from the folder called folder1:
/*define path to folder*/
libname folder1 '/home/u13181/folder1/';
/*delete dataset called data1 in folder called folder1*/
proc delete data=folder1.data1;
run;
When we navigate back to folder1 we can see that the dataset called data1 has been deleted from the folder:
Example 2: Use PROC DELETE to Delete Multiple Datasets
We can use the following syntax with PROC DELETE to delete the datasets called data2 and data3 from the folder called folder1:
/*define path to folder*/
libname folder1 '/home/u13181/folder1/';
/*delete datasets called data2 and data3 in folder called folder1*/
proc delete data=folder1.data2 folder1.data3;
run;
When we navigate back to folder1 we can see that both datasets have been deleted from the folder:
Note: You can find the complete documentation for the PROC DELETE statement in SAS here.
Additional Resources
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in SAS:
How to Use PROC COPY in SAS
How to Check if Dataset Exists in SAS
How to Concatenate Datasets in SAS