noFmtError For Me

You know those little SAS options that come in super useful about once every nine months, but you can never remember the name cause you almost never need to use it? So you spend half a day pulling your hair out trying to remember what the little bugger is called and scrolling through the millions of results that the SAS online doc returns from your futile keyword search (another topic for another day).

Well, here's one that came up today:

options fmtError|nofmtError;

This tells SAS not to worry if it can't find a format that a data set variable is associated with.

I'll end up using this when someone passes me a data set they have created, but I don't have access to the formats they are using.

SHELLacked

A couple months ago the company I do a lot of work for got a nifty new Unix server to replace the old one. Woohoo! It's fast. Screamin' fast. Now we can be even more productive than ever!

Except it doesn't have bash. Ugh. Unix without bash is like chocolate syrup without the chocolate. I don't really know what that is, but it certainly isn't good.

Something strange happens to my fingers at the standard prompt. They forgt how to tpye. And my memory goes all funny and I can't remember the names of directories and files. It's nearly impossible for me to get anything done. And multiple requests to sysAdmins have gotten me nowhere.
Dear Sysadmin: My tyoing sux. Can you plez install bash?

Dear Sysadmin: This Korn is killing me. Bash please?

Dear Sysadmin: The tab key seems to have died. Could you find a way to make it Bourne Again?