sasquatch

Use SAS, R, and Quarto Together

sasquatch allows you to combine the power of R, SAS, and quarto together to create reproducible multilingual reports. sasquatch can:

• Run SAS code blocks interactively
• Send data back and forth between SAS and R
• Conduct basic file management on a SAS client
• Render SAS output within quarto documents.

sasquatch relies on the SASPy Python package and the reticulate R package to interoperate with Python. Check out vignette("configuration") for guidance on SASPy configuration.

Installation

Package installation

You can install the development version of sasquatch like so:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pkg_install("ryanzomorrodi/sasquatch")

Python installation

Make sure Python is installed on your system. If Python has not been installed, you can install Python like so:

reticulate::install_python()

or download the installer from the Python Software Foundation.

SASPy installation

To install the SASPy package and its dependencies within a Python virutal environment:

sasquatch::install_saspy()

See vignette("configuration") for guidance on SASPy configuration.

Usage

Once you have setup SASPy and connected to the right python environment using reticulate (if necessary), you can create a quarto document like any other, call sas_connect(), and just get going!

---
format: html
engine: knitr
---

```{r}
library(sasquatch)
sas_connect()
```

```{sas}

```

Code blocks

Now, you should be able to run SAS code blocks in RStudio like any other.

Sending output to viewer

If you want to send the SAS output to the viewer, you can utilize the sas_run_selected() addin with a custom shortcut.

Converting tables

Pass tables between R and SAS with sas_from_r() and sas_to_r().

sas_from_r(mtcars, "mtcars")
cars <- sas_to_r("cars", libref = "sashelp")

Rendering quarto documents

And of course, render beautiful quarto documents in the same style you would expect from SAS with the sas_engine().

Comparison with similar packages

sasr

• sasr works identically to sasquatch relying on the SASPy Python package to interface with SAS, but does not include any interactive, file management, or quarto functionality.

configSAS

• Like sasr and sasquatch, configSAS relies on the SASPy Python package, but it primarily focuses on solely on knitr engine support.
• The configSAS engine HTML output CSS styles interfere with the rest of the document and SAS code output is not contained within a code block.

SASmarkdown

• SASmarkdown does not rely on the SASPy Python package and thus is fairly simple to set up; however, it does require a SAS executable to be installed on the same machine as R.
• In contrast, SASPy-reliant packages can interface with both local and remote SAS installations and can easily pass data between R and SAS without the need for intermediate files.
• SASmarkdown features several different engines for various formats not currently implemented within sasquatch like latex pdfs or non-HTML5 HTML.

sasquatch may be beneficial to you if you…

• Rely on remote SAS client
• Desire interactive SAS functionality while developing
• Require remote SAS file management
• Would like to be able to easily send data back and forth between SAS and R
  without the use of intermediate files

If you require pdf knitr support and have a local installation of SAS, I would recommend using SASmarkdownat this time.