SAS Help Center Tips

• Getting Started with SAS Help Center
• Using SAS Help Center Settings
• Using the Language Selector
• Using SAS Help Center Search
  • Performing a Search
  • Filtering Searches
  • General Tips
  • Operators
  • Parentheses ( )
  • Quotation Marks
  • Wildcard Characters
  • Proximity Searches
  • Examples
• Using Generative AI with SAS Documentation
  • Generative AI Guidelines and Recommendations
  • Use Cases
  • Prompt Engineering
• Slide Shows

Getting Started with SAS Help Center

SAS Help Center contains a collection of related documents but can also be limited to a single document. Except where noted below, this page describes instances of Help Center that contain multiple documents.

SAS Help Center’s interface contains four parts:

• an application bar along the top of the window that contains a button to show or hide the navigation pane, the documentation title, a version selector (unless no other versions exist), a search button, links to the PDF version of the currently displayed content (if available), a Feedback link, a language selector , and a More menu . From the menu, you can access tips for using the Help Center, read accessibility information, email the current page, view and modify Help Center settings, and view information about the Help content that you are viewing.
• a navigation pane that lists topics. On a small screen, the navigation pane might be hidden by default. Use the table of contents button on the application bar to show and hide the navigation pane.
• the content pane in which the documentation pages are displayed. When you select a topic from the navigation pane, the documentation page is displayed in the content pane.
• a footer that contains a link to the SAS Privacy Statement, a link to the SAS Terms and Conditions, and copyright information.

The language selector in the application bar provides a way to change the language of the documentation. This language selection applies to both the currently displayed document and the interface of the Help Center. See Using the Language Selector for more details. See Using SAS Help Center Settings for more details about independently changing the Help Center interface’s language.

At the top right of the content pane are previous and next buttons. At the top left of the content pane is the title of the current document. The title is a link to return to the home page of that document.

In the case of a Help Center that contains only one document, the title in the application bar is the title of the document. A version selector is displayed in the top left of the content area, which you can use to navigate to other versions of the same document. If no version is shown, it is because no other versions of the document are available.

Using SAS Help Center Settings

From the Settings window, you can invert the Help Center colors.

To open the Settings window, click and select Settings.

To invert the colors of Help Center, select Invert Application Colors.

Using the Language Selector

By default, SAS Help Center respects the preferred language setting of your browser. That is, if the menus and controls of SAS Help Center are available in your browser’s preferred language, they are displayed in that language. If the document that you are viewing is available in your browser’s preferred language, it is also displayed in that language. If the document that you are viewing is not available in your preferred language, the English version is displayed.

You can override this default behavior using the language selector in the application bar of SAS Help Center. The language selector lists the languages that are available for the currently displayed document. When you choose a language from the language selector menu, that choice takes precedence over your browser settings. The currently displayed document is opened in a new tab or window in the newly selected language.

Using SAS Help Center Search

Follow these guidelines when you use the search field to look for documentation.

Performing a Search

To perform a search:

1. Click in the application bar.
2. In the search field enter your search term and press Enter.
3. Results are displayed on the left side of the Search Results pane and, if applicable, filters are displayed on the right.
   Note: The scope of the search is the document (or set of documents) that is loaded in Help Center. If you do not see what you were looking for in the search results, you can expand your search by clicking the Search all SAS documentation for more results link. Clicking this link launches a search of all SAS documentation in a new tab.
4. Click on a search result to close the search pane and display the selected page.
5. Click to return to the search results pane.

Filtering Searches

If more than one document is available in your instance of SAS Help Center, the right side of the search results pane displays filters that you can use to limit your search.

In the filter area, under Filter results, select one or more check boxes to limit your search results to just those found in the selected documents. Select the All Categories check box to see all results again. Note that if no check boxes are selected, all results are shown.

Search hit-counts update as you modify the filters.

Your filter choices are maintained as you perform new searches, or close and reopen the search pane.

General Tips

• The search includes only documents that are part of the currently displayed SAS Help Center. To search all of SAS documentation for the same search term, simply click Search all SAS documentation for more results at the top of the results pane.
• Case sensitivity. Searches are not case sensitive. However, Boolean operators must be uppercase.
• Phrases. Enclose phrases in a pair of double quotation marks.
• Special characters. The following characters can be included within search terms: apostrophe ('), underscore (_), dollar sign ($), percent sign (%). The wildcard characters are the question mark (?) for single characters, and the asterisk (*) for multiple characters. All other special characters are ignored.
• If you search for multiple terms and do not use specific search syntax, search results are prioritized as follows:
  • results that include the exact phrase
  • results that include all of the search terms
  • results that include any of the search terms

  If you enter any search operators or special characters, only your stipulated search is performed.

• The search includes words that share a common root with your search term. For example, a search for “early” returns pages that contain the word “earlier”.
• Certain pages in SAS Help Center enable you to choose the coding language for the examples that are displayed. A search, however, spans all languages that are available on a page and not only the language that is currently displayed. Therefore, it is possible to get a search result that does not seem to contain what you searched for because the found term exists only in one of the languages that are hidden. Change the displayed language to see the found term.
• The search includes only documents that are part of the currently displayed SAS Help Center. The Table of Contents might contain links to external documents. The contents of these external documents are not included in the search results. To search one of these linked documents, open it, and then perform a new search.
• Search terms are not highlighted in the results. To see the term highlighted use your browser’s Find function, which is usually accessed by pressing Ctrl+F.
• Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters are searched individually. To accurately search for a multiple-character word in these languages, surround the search term in double quotation marks.

Operators

Use the following operators to create more complex search expressions:

OR operator

Place the OR or || operator between two terms or phrases to find topics that contain either of the terms or phrases.

AND operator

Place the AND or && operator between two terms to find topics that contain both of the terms.

NOT operator

Place the NOT operator between two terms or phrases to find topics that include the first but not the second.

+ operator

Place the + operator (and no space) before a term to find only topics that include the term.

- operator

Place the - operator (and no space) before a term to find only topics that do not include the term.

Follow these guidelines for using the operators:

• Operators are case sensitive.
• To search for the literal words OR, AND, or NOT, enclose the words in double quotation marks (for example, "To be or not to be").
• The OR, AND, and NOT operators must have both a left operand and a right operand.
• Enclose the OR, AND, and NOT operators in blank spaces except when you combine clauses that are enclosed in parentheses. You do not have to enclose the || and && operators in blank spaces.
• When combined with a wildcard character, the words OR, AND, and NOT are treated as search terms and not as operators. For example, NOT? matches note and NOT* matches notice.
• Although + is valid for use with the AND operator, it does not change the meaning of an expression that the AND operation is applied to. For example, all of the following expressions produce the same results.
  • this AND that
  • +this AND that
  • this AND +that
  • +this AND +that

Parentheses ( )

Use parentheses to group terms and to subdivide the search expression. For example, to search for a topic that contains the word web as well as either the word contour or the word olap, use web AND (contour OR olap) as the search expression.

• Unbalanced parentheses, empty parentheses, or blank spaces enclosed in parentheses are invalid search expressions.
• Parentheses can be adjacent to operators.

Quotation Marks

Use either the straight double quotation mark (") or the right double quotation mark (”). All other double quotation mark characters are ignored.

• Unbalanced quotation marks and empty or blank phrases are invalid. For example, the following search terms are invalid:
  • "sas
  • ""
  • " "
• Search syntax elements are treated as searchable text when they are enclosed in double quotation marks. For example, when you specify "this AND that*", the application searches for the literal phrase this and that. The AND is not treated as an operator, and the * is not treated as a wildcard character but is considered a special character that is ignored.

Wildcard Characters

The single-character wildcard is the question mark (?). The ? is matched with any single character that is in the same location as the wildcard. For example, use te?t to find the words text or test.

The multiple-character wildcard is the asterisk (*). The * is matched with zero or more characters that are in the same location as the wildcard. For example, use live* to find the words live, lives, or lived.

• You can use a wildcard at the start, in the middle, and at the end of a term. For example, use ?oot to find the words root and boot. Use li*e to find the words live and license. Use Ju* to find the words June and July.
• You can use a wildcard more than once in a single term. For example, use da?? to find any four-letter word that begins with da, such as data or dark.
• You can mix wildcards. For example, use d*l?s to find the words DLLs and doubles.
• Do not mix wildcards with ignored special characters.

Proximity Searches

You can search for two terms that are located within a specified distance from each other. Use the tilde (~) character at the end of a phrase and specify a number that represents the number of words that can be between the two terms. For example, use "contour olap" ~10 to search for instances of contour and olap that are within 10 words of each other in a topic.

• The terms must be enclosed in double quotation marks.
• The ~ must be followed by a number, which specifies the maximum number of words that can be between the search terms.
• You can include blank spaces before but not after the ~.
• The proximity search finds matches when the terms in the topic are in the same order as they are in the search expression. That is, if you specify "this sentence" ~2, then the text This is my sentence is a match, but My sentence is this is not a match.
• Using more or less than two terms in a proximity query might yield unexpected results.

Examples

OR

To search for topics that contain either the exact phrase olap database or just the word mddb, specify the following search expression:

• "olap database" mddb
• "olap database" OR mddb
• "olap database" || mddb

AND

To search for documents that contain the phrases olap database and olap mddb, use one of the following search expressions.

• "olap database" AND "olap mddb"
• "olap database" && "olap mddb"

NOT

To search for documents that contain the term web but not the phrase web browser, use web NOT "web browser".

+

To search for documents that must contain olap and might contain mddb, use +olap mddb as the search expression. Note that in the results of this search, items that contain mddb are moved to the top of the list. Otherwise, the results are identical to those returned when you search for only olap.

Using Generative AI with SAS Documentation

This section details general guidelines and strategies on how to best use third-party generative AI tools with SAS Documentation.

Generative AI Guidelines and Recommendations

Here is some background information about generative AI:

• Generative AI can provide inaccurate information. Check the official SAS documentation for the authoritative, accurate information.
• Generative AI output might not be sourced from official SAS documentation, or it might be sourced from different versions of that information. Ensure you are working with official, current versions.
• Be wary when using any confidential data or personal information. Generative AI providers might use this data to further train their model or store your data.
• If you are using generative AI for translations, be cautious because it can be unreliable when translating content.

Here are some tips on how to use generative AI with SAS documentation:

• When inputting information into a generative AI model to contextualize or ground a prompt, use PDF and HTML files with structured formatting. This can often yield the best results.
• You can also copy and paste information directly into generative AI from SAS documentation.
• Using a URL to SAS documentation with generative AI can be problematic. Many forms of generative AI are not able to read URLs and might give you inaccurate information.

Use Cases

You can use generative AI to assist you with the following:

• Summarizing parts of SAS documentation to get a basic understanding of the content.
• Parsing through content for specific information about a certain topic of interest.
• Helping answer questions that you might have about specifics using the documentation as a source of information.

Prompt Engineering

How to create prompts for generative AI that generate better results:

• Specify that you want results from only provided information and not from outside information. Limiting your query in this way can increase the accuracy of the responses that you get.
• Specify how you want the response structured. Generative AI generally works better when breaking tasks into steps.
• Give examples of what you want in a response. Generative AI can use these examples as guidelines for how to respond to your prompt.
• Refine your prompts by iterating on them multiple times, as the first result you get might not be the best result.

Slide Shows

SAS Help Center content can contain slide shows. To navigate a slide show, use the arrows to the left and right or use the dots below the image. The dots also show your progress within the slide show.

Click to view the slide show in full-screen mode. In full-screen mode, click Show Caption in the lower left corner of the screen to display the caption associated with the slide. Click Hide Caption to turn off the captions again. Progress is shown as a numerical count in the upper left corner of the screen. Exit full-screen mode by clicking in the upper right corner of the screen.