Write directory listing to CSV in Windows PowerShell

This one-line command will invoke Windows PowerShell to write a directory listing to a CSV file, which is easy to use in spreadsheets and database programs. It recurses subfolders, and it includes the following information: full file name, creation time, last modified time, file size, and owner (last modified by).

To use it, simply modify the two paths: directory to scan and path to the CSV.

powershell "Get-ChildItem -Recurse c:\directory\to\scan\ | ForEach-Object {$_ | add-member -name "Owner" -membertype noteproperty -value (get-acl $_.fullname).owner -passthru} | Sort-Object fullname | Select FullName,CreationTime,LastWriteTime,Length,Owner | Export-Csv -Force -NoTypeInformation c:\folder\to\directory.csv"

Tested on Windows 7 Enterprise.

I use it as part of an automatic process to archive a folder with Git.

Change the process priority in SAS

This SAS code programmatically changes the process priority for the current SAS program. You may want to use this for SAS batch jobs.

For example, when I run multiprocessor jobs using Ian J. Ghent %multiThreadDataStep macro, the Windows user interface becomes less responsive and my batch job competes with other processes, but using this method addresses both issues.

Simply run the line corresponding to the desired priority level. To decrease process priority, choose one of the last two.

x "wmic.exe process where processid=""&SYSJOBID"" call setpriority 'high priority'";
x "wmic.exe process where processid=""&SYSJOBID"" call setpriority 'above normal'";
x "wmic.exe process where processid=""&SYSJOBID"" call setpriority 'normal'";
x "wmic.exe process where processid=""&SYSJOBID"" call setpriority 'below normal'";
x "wmic.exe process where processid=""&SYSJOBID"" call setpriority 'idle'";

Tested on SAS 9.4 on Windows 7 and SAS 9.3 on Windows 2008.

I don't have SAS for Linux, but I guess it would look like this to increase the niceness and therefore reduce the process priority:

x "renice -p 16 &SYSJOBID";

Visualizing principal components with R and Sochi Olympic Athletes

Principal Components Analysis (PCA) is used as a dimensionality reduction method. Here we simply explain PCA step-by-step using data about Sochi Olympic Curlers.

Type I error rates in test of normality by simulation

This simulation tests the type I error rates of the Shapiro-Wilk test of normality in R and SAS.