The STOP statement causes SAS to stop processing the current DATA step immediately and resume processing statements after the end of the current DATA step.
SAS outputs a data set for the current DATA step. However, the observation being processed when STOP executes is not added. The STOP statement can be used alone or in an IF-THEN statement or SELECT group.
Use STOP with any features that read SAS data sets using random access methods, such as the POINT= option in the SET statement. Because SAS does not detect an end-of-file with this access method, you must include program statements to prevent continuous processing of the DATA step.
stop;
if idcode=9999 then stop;
select (a); when (0) output; otherwise stop; end;
This example shows how to use STOP to avoid an infinite loop within a DATA step when you are using random access methods:
data sample; do sampleobs=1 to totalobs by 10; set master.research point=sampleobs nobs=totalobs; output; end; stop; run;