176-31: UltraEdit: Thumbs-Up Code Editor for SAS® Programming on PC and UNIX Servers

The use and features of UltraEdit, a powerful and practical Program Editor application, are described for creating, editing and saving SAS program code when working on the PC and remote servers. UltraEdit is a Windows application, which runs on a PC and has a familiar and user-friendly interface. It has common for Windows-editors features like text highlighting with the mouse and shift-arrow keys; same commands for copy, paste, cut; etc. What makes UltraEdit unique is its ability to work with files on any remote server transparently for users, as if you are working with files on your local hard drive. Using a built-in FTP engine, UltraEdit allows programmers to easily open/save/reload files residing on any PC-based or mainframe server and in any operating system (UNIX, VMS, Windows NT, etc.). While some other editors (MultiEdit, SlickEdit) provide similar FTP features, UltraEdit has by far the most convenient, intuitive and complete implementation of remote work with files. UltraEdit combines transparent FTP with other practical features essential for day-to-day SAS programming such as color syntax highlighting, powerful search, column block processing, project files and many others. This shareware program (www.ultraedit.com) has a good chance to boost the productivity of any SAS programmer. INTRODUCTION SAS programmers work on a plethora of different computing platforms. While small companies can enjoy working with SAS on a PC in Windows, it is common for larger companies and corporations to use mainframe computers such as Sun, VAX, IBM, HP servers using different operating systems (UNIX, VMS, MVS, etc.). The variety of programming platforms forces SAS programmers to learn and use different Program Editor applications to create, modify and save their code. Every programmer knows how frustrating it could be to change their programming tools and habits, and thus the search for a better program editor, a programmer’s main tool, continues. There are two main approaches for editing programs. Use of platform-specific Editor: For Unix it could be VI, Emacs, X-windows Editor or SAS Editor for Unix. It gives a programmer very easy access to files (open/save/reload) but platformspecific Editors are usually limited in features, not intuitive and require program specific skills to learn compared to Windows-based applications. Use of Windows-based Editor: Good examples in this category are PC SAS Enhanced Editor, Notepad, etc. Windows-based Editors are feature rich, have common Windows interface but access to files on a server requires the use of File Transfer Protocol (FTP). It normally involves many steps: saving files from Windows-based Editor to local hard drive; using a special FTP program to transfer files from PC to Unix servers and back; running the SAS System on a server. Working with 3 common SAS files: .SAS, .LOG, .LST multiplies FTP use and the number of manual operations to perform. During recent years, few Windows-based Editors evolved to incorporate FTP engines inside the application, thus greatly facilitating the work with files on servers through FTP and eliminating the need for a separate FTP program. The purpose of this article is to introduce the SAS community to UltraEdit, the Program Editor which is, in the author’s opinion, best suited for SAS programming, rich on practical features and has the easiest and most intuitive work implementation with SAS files on a remote server. Two other Windows based Editors with built-in FTP abilities: MultiEdit and SlickEdit are briefly described and compared with UltraEdit. For simplicity, all examples in this article will be in a UNIX server environment. Posters SUGI 31