When migrating SLC between Windows and Linux do I have to modify my SAS language programs?
Altair EmployeeThere are various issues to beware of when switching operating system (OS)...
The use of 'X' or 'CALL SYSTEM' or '%SYSEXEC' commands, and the use of filename (pipe) ... these are OS specific.
Filename paths change from using "/" to "\" and from "C:" to "/". In some situations the '/' and '\' are interchangeable and SLC takes care of the mapping. A smart programmer mitigates against the impact by specifying folder/directory names using macro variables in INCLUDE'd scripts or AUTOEXEC files so they only need changing in one place.
Encoding is *independent* of OS. SLC on any OS can read/write data sets and files in any encoding.
Diacritic characters, such as éàçôù, in paths/filenames - this is dependent upon the file-system where the disk is mounted (and upon NFS/CIFS configuration for shared disks). All modern file-systems used in Windows and Linux environments are supporting varied encoding of filenames, so these are unlikely to be an issue when migrating.
Text files created on Windows typically have 'CR' and 'LF' at the end of each line, while text files created on Linux typically have only 'LF'. However SLC can read text files on both systems regardless of which has been used, and can write text files using either convention.
The use of %INCLUDE may need to be examined as the location and encoding of sas scripts may be different on different OSs.
Some of the system options specified in the CFG file (altairslc.cfg) are machine-specific or OS-specific so these should be reviewed too.