UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

Yes you do: generated by SAS, Its a SAS dataset and has a pendent file ending by sas7bcat...
To answer shortly it is like asking how to make a Excel .xlsx file into csv without using excel, it can be done only IF you know what you are looking for, as these files contain the structure of the spreadsheet and the data. You must know the content to know when the data records starts and end and you must know what they are and how they are organized because that part is what you see with special characters and so no hope for someone to guess
SAS has one thing I remember, it says somewhere how many records and variables are in the file, if that can help to check you have correctly found the data, I doubt it be enough the find the names of the variables...
In other words someone working with SAS knowing its structure etc.. could maybe be able but why would he when he can simply export from SAS the same you would from Excel to CSV ?
Did you check if Excel in latest versions cant import such file?
I did that once year back because I had a corrupted dataset, that was not converted form SAS 6 32 bit to SAS8 64, because it was forgotten and got not be read ( corrupt) it was a struggle BUT I had a statistician with me to help saying what the file was supposed to contain and described me the structure so I knew I had to find the first and last record and split the file in 3 then check if I had the all the data...

The same is true with Excel or WORD files, none of them are intended to be read with standard text editors like vi notepad, otherwise why would you pay $$$ for them other than having a load of advanced functions you dont use ( the basic are already sufficent...)...

Your only easy choice now is to find someone who uses SAS to convert it for you hoping you dont need the sas7bcat file... and your luck is these files are ASCII ( well could be UTF8 now if in SAS9 ) and are not dependant or architecture so a friend with SAS on a PC can do the job

I wouldn't hold out much hope, but have you tried the strings utility? It can pull text out of binary files.

Code:

strings sample.sas7bdat

You might get lucky and end up with something that can be massaged into a CSV file with a little effort.

Andrew

Problem here is i have no clue how this sample.sas7bdat is generated.
Normally a file with extension sas7bdat can be assumed as binary encoded file by SAS since SAS version 7.0.
It can be exported as .csv or .txt whichever but in accesable format so that i can open the file and access the data in unix.
If this is your question and some python coding skills can be assumed, this may worth a try:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/python
#sas7bdat_csv.py
#Usage: python sas7bdat_csv.py sample.sas7bdat
import sys
from sas7bdat import SAS7BDAT

with SAS7BDAT(sys.argv[1]) as f:
    for row in f:
        print (row)
f.close()

I tried this code with the famous iris.sas7bdat without any issue. Alternatively, this job can be done in R with packages to handle sas7bdat file too. HTH

Thanks, can you let me know how to invoke this code. Getting below error

Code:

$ python test.py test.sas7bdat

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 5, in <module>
    from sas7bdat import SAS7BDAT
ImportError: No module named sas7bdat


Inside test.py
#!/usr/bin/python
#sas7bdat_csv.py
#Usage: python sas7bdat_csv.py sample.sas7bdat
import sys
from sas7bdat import SAS7BDAT

with SAS7BDAT(sys.argv[1]) as f:
    for row in f:
        print (row)
f.close()

You need install the sas7bdat module for python.