Understanding the SAS Log File and Diagnosing Errors
Overview
Anyone who works with SAS (or any package) on a regular basis will
ultimately make an error in statement syntax. SAS will always generate
a log file that ends in the extension .log when you run a SAS
program. The log file is the first file you should examine after running
SAS. By examining the log file you can determine if SAS ran correctly
or where errors were found.
Understanding the log file
To get an understanding of how to read the log file we will examine a
few sample log files with common errors in them. Hopefully, through this
experience you will gain some insight in diagnosing future errors you may
encounter.