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Is there a maximum size of a SAS SCRIPT? If so, how does this differ (if at all) between SAS 8 and 9?

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What's the context? are you getting a specific error or running into a problem?

There is no effective limit to a SAS program (they're called programs, not scripts). For example, I recently generated a sas program (using sas) that was 13,000+ lines of code. I don't think there's an effective limit on program size, since most SAS programs typically have a number of discrete steps. The only practical limit would be something like memory. For example, if you were doing a PROC SORT on an inordinately large dataset, you might run into memory constraints.

There are, on varying platforms, different default Line sizes for SAS programs, which might cause a program with very long lines to get truncated.

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issue solved! the program was over 17,000 lines long. Turned out to be the same program, which had been copied below so was being run twice - hence any changes to the one above were being overwritten by the one below! Am kicking myself accordingly... – NextLevel-IS Jan 13 at 17:54
Yes this has happened to me before and caused all sorts of problems! I discovered it was because I had accidentally hit the F4 key after submitting a program with the F3 key! The F4 key has the default behavior of 'recall' which places the code just run back into the program editor wherever the cursor happens to be. Very dangerous if you ask me and surprisingly difficult to realise. I removed the action from the F4 key as soon as I figured this out. – Robert Penridge Jan 16 at 2:41

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