OPTION NoThreads; (and) OPTION NoQuoteLenMax; (Esoteric Errors): (SAS)

The above listed options can be found in the header of every SAS program that I create. Strangely, though the options listed are extremely important, most SAS programmers overlook their existence. The reason for such, is likely due to neither option being discussed in any SAS material that I’ve come across.

What do these options achieve?

OPTION NoThreads;

This option disables threaded processing within the SAS application. Essentially, what this means, is that additional CPU resources will be needed for running SAS programs, and as a result, programs will take longer in real time to complete. So why utilize this option?

From my experience, when using PROC SQL to perform functions on large data sets, there have been numerous instances where threading has caused the data set that I am referencing, to become corrupted. There are ways to repair corrupted data sets within SAS, however, I have never been able to successfully repair data through the various methods that SAS provides. Therefore, to reduce/eliminate the risk of this occurring, I always activate the NoThreads option before I begin my initial coding.

OPTION NoQuoteLenMax;

This option disables SAS from displaying error warnings that terminate processing such as:

WARNING 32-169: The quoted string currently being processed has become more than 262 characters long. You may have unbalanced quotation marks.

This error is caused by an aspect of SAS functionality, a SAS limits the amount of characters that you can utilize when programming code that contains quoted strings.

From my experience, this error typically happens when applying formats which have extremely long lengths. For example, if you are applying a format which provides a lengthy description to a coinciding variable, you will likely run into a message similar to the one above.
Therefore, I always enable this option to prevent this error from occurring. Why SAS included this interesting bit of functionality as an initially enabled option is beyond me. However, it is best not to ask these questions, and to avoid the issue completely by utilizing OPTION NoQuoteLenMax.