Would overwriting the existing SAS dataset take more time?
I got a short question - If we are creating a SAS dataset say - Sample.sas7bdat which already exists, will the code take more time to execute (because here the code has to overwrite the existing dataset) than the case when this dataset was not already there?
data sample;
.....
.....
run;
I did some reasearch on the internet but could not find a satisfactory answer. To me it seems like the code should take a little bit extra time, though not sure how much of impact it would make on a 10GB of dataset.
I don't think the run time would be affected at all. SAS data step processing does not "destructively" replace an existing SAS dataset record by record as it creates the data vector, It writes the data to a temporary name and then catalogs the result as the permanent name in the after the step completes.
