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SAS Code Fragments
Copying and Combining SAS Format Libraries

How do you combine SAS format libraries? 

Say you have a format library in e:\temp\data1 and a format library in e:\temp\data2 and you want to combine them.  Here is how you can do this.  BEFORE YOU DO THIS, you should make a copy of the format library in e:\temp\data2 since it will be overwritten in this process.

libname first "e\temp\data1";
libname second "e\temp\data2";

proc catalog cat=first.FORMATS;
  copy out=second.FORMATS;
run;

What if the format library in e:\temp\data1 was a version 6 format library?  In that case, use the v6 engine like this.

libname first v6 "e\temp\data1";
libname second "e\temp\data2";

proc catalog cat=first.FORMATS;
  copy out=second.FORMATS;
run;

You can use this trick to copy a SAS version 6 format library to a SAS version 8 format library, like below.  This copies e:\temp\data1\formats.sc2 to e:\temp\data2\formats.sas7bcat (a version 8 format library).

libname first v6 "e:\temp\data1";
libname second v8 "e:\temp\data2";

proc catalog cat=first.FORMATS;
  copy out=second.FORMATS;
run;

proc format library=second fmtlib;
run;

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