


< rest deleted >

As a followup to my post let me add that:

I'm not really a Windows or Windows NT user, so please excuse my ignorance.
However, I'm a developer at SAS Institute, and one component of the
application that I support is the ability to submit a (SAS) batch job from
within an interactive SAS session.  The user site can enter their
site-specific "batch profile" into a dataset within our product, specifying
the pathname to the SAS executable, specifying site specific SAS options,
etc.  At run time certain variables are resolved, and the resolved file is
written to an external ascii file.  Then I exit to the operating system and
run the job asynchronously, returning to the interactive session as soon as
the job is submitted.  The batch job then runs concurrently with the
interactive session.

As currently designed, the internal dataset has a record length of 80
characters.  But, to run the batch job, the command to reinvoke SAS in
batch mode requires more than 80 characters.  Up til NT this has not been a
problem, since every job control/shell language up til NT (eg.
MVS/CMS/VMS/UNIX/OS2) had a way to escape the CR/LF and enter a single
command across multiple lines (OS/2 via their REXX language, which is
*STANDARD* with OS/2).

The gist of all this is, since this application is for end-users, not
within my company, I have to try to develop this process using native NT.
Since my first posting I've learned that there are several third party
companies that provide alternative script languages for Windows/Windows NT.
And I'm sure a company that licenses our product would use that alternative
script language if they had it, but I can't develop under the assumption
that they have anything other than what comes with NT.

I saw another post on this list (the subject was something like "Is vi
available for Windows?") in which someone said that vi, make, awk, and
***ksh*** was available with Microsoft TOOLKIT.  What is that product?  Is
it a separate product or part of Windows?  ksh would do what I need if I
could count on it at all NT sites.

One last question:  I've heard that NT has remote processing capabilities,
i.e. I could shove this batch job off to a server machine and have it run
there.  If these are native NT commands rather than network specific
commands, this would also help me improve this process.  If you can comment
on these commands, I would appreciate it.

Thanks again for the help,

--
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Scott Bass                           |  SAS Institute Inc.
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