[ESS] ESS[SAS]: Submit region starting new SAS session?

[Erin Jonaitis]

Hi Rodney,

Hmm; C-c C-p is also undefined for me. C-c C-r seems to be the "submit region" shortcut on my setup (upon opening a .sas file, it tells me SAS mode was last updated in June 2001, so perhaps I am working with an older version of ESS). But submitting a region does me no good if what's submitted vanishes from memory...

At first I wondered if this is just a difference between how SAS-Unix works and how SAS works on Windows (which is where I learned to program in SAS). On Windows you can indeed submit a chunk of code and the libraries etc. defined in that code will persist as long as SAS is open. But that's not true here. The thing that puzzles me is that ESS[R] actually does work the way I expected it to: I can define a variable (or a function, whatever) and it stays defined so that I can work with it further. I don't understand what makes that possible in R and not SAS.

What is the usual workflow for SAS programmers using emacs? Do people typically redefine everything with every run through the code? Do people store everything (even intermediate stages of work) in permanent datasets so they don't have to? (Or is everyone else just able to write code right the first time without debugging?? That would sure be nice....)

Erin