OUTFILE Subcommand (SORT CASES command)

OUTFILE specifies the data file to be saved when the active dataset is sorted. This subcommand is optional and is provided as a convenience. It will avoid the extra data pass that occurs if you follow SORT CASES with the SAVE command to save the sorted data. Reducing the number of data passes can improve performance.

• Filenames should be enclosed in quotes and are stored in the working directory unless a path is included as part of the file specification.
• If OUTFILE is specified more than once, only the last OUTFILE is in effect.

INDEX=NO|YES. The optional INDEX keyword indicates if the file should be indexed. Indexing table lookup files can improve performance when merging data files with STAR JOIN. The default is NO.

Note: Sorting and saving with an index may take longer and result in a different sort order than sorting and saving without an index. The resulting file will usually take more disk space.

SIZE=DEFAULT|value. For indexed files, the optional SIZE keyword specifies the memory (in megabytes) to allocate for the index. The default is DEFAULT, which is SQRT(N)*4, where N is the number of cases in the file. For example, if there are 100 cases, the memory allocation is 40 MB.