Change the default SAS® session encoding to UTF-8


When you need to change the default SAS session encoding, follow the steps below. Note that the SAS® 9.4 English edition is used in the example.

Note that this change also changes the encoding used in every SAS configured component. These components include, but are not limited to, the following: workspace servers, stored process servers, and OLAP Servers.

In Windows Operating Environments

  1. Find the sasv9.cfg file in this directory: C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.4
  2. Open it with Notepad. Change the contents as shown below:

From this: -config "C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.4\nls\en\sasv9.cfg"

To this: -config "C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.4\nls\u8\sasv9.cfg"

In UNIX Operating Environments

  1. Navigate to the !SASROOT folder. Usually, it is in /SASHome/SASFoundation/9.4.
  2. Change the symbolic link of the SAS executable as shown below:

From this: sas -> bin/sas_en

To this: sas -> bin/sas_u8