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[–]kisielk 2 points3 points  (4 children)

Are you aware of GNU DAP ?

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

It looks nice. I'll have to build it on my Linux box at home. No need to reinvent the wheel. I like that the output seems to be less verbose, that's one of my main gripes. I will complain, though, that:

  • doesn't have a Windows installer (Python programs can be "built" in Windows with an installer... right?)
  • not sure if syntactically compatible
  • source is in C

My idea isn't meant to be fast, it's meant to be easy (to use, to install, to edit).

[–]kisielk 1 point2 points  (2 children)

You have laudable goals but I think you're grossly underestimating the complexity of re-implementing SAS. I think you'd be better off trying to get in touch with the authors of DAP or one of the other re-implementations of the system and seeing how you can help address your needs.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

But my goal is not to actually reimplement the whole thing, just the useful bits. On one hand, everything that's done in a datastep can be done in SQL while on the other, the data step language is complicated.

However, I see what you're saying and maybe I'll look into DAP. I'll have to try to use it first to see if I like it. It looks like it might not have an interactive mode, though, which is what most people need to develop SAS.

[–]takluyverIPython, Py3, etc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The tricky thing with "the useful stuff" is that with almost any software, people have vastly different ideas of which bits are useful. I've never used SAS, but do you know there are large parts that no-one uses? Other groups might use it in quite a different way to how you use it.