Text can be entered into the comment fields using one or more of the following mechanisms:
It is then saved to a SAS catalog SLIST entry using the Screen Control Language (SCL) 'Savelist' command. The linkage between the SAS dataset and the SAS catalog entry is accomplished by creating a unique identifier that is generated and stored as an 8-character variable. The identifier is used as part of the catalog entry name into which the comments are stored. This value is also stored in the SAS dataset that contains all the other information about a given task. Comments for each observation are stored in a catalog entry of type SLIST. This type of catalog entry was used so that SCL lists could easily be stored and retrieved using standard SCL functions.