What does VScode consider and "error" in a SAS run block?

[sasutils]

Using SAS 9.4 - IOM connection when I submit a block of code sometimes VSCode decides there was and error and asks me to look at the console log. (Which is gibberish to me).

And then worse it continues to complain about errors and not behave normally after that, even for code that definitely does not have any errors. Examples:

• The SAS log window does not jump to the new submissions, I have to scroll it myself.
• The HTML5 output is not returned to the results window.

What is it that it is detecting as an error? How can I debug finding out what is wrong?

[scnwwu]

Please click Help > Toggle Developer Tools from the top menu bar of VS Code and click the Console tab. And paste error/warnings from there for us to triage. Thanks.

[sasutils]

Like I said it is greek to me. The error message included a link to CONSOLE LOG so here is content of that file/view when the first error occurred.
vsc0de_sas_console.txt

[sasutils]

So if I remove the temporary file I made named OUTFILE it seems to fix the issue.
WHY?

filename outfile;
proc print data=sashelp.class;
run;

[sasutils]

Looks to me like this program:
https://github.com/sassoftware/vscode-sas-extension/blob/e3390d227aae96983e6e34ba2edc33e4da4020ed/client/src/connection/itc/script.ts

Is calling this method
https://support.sas.com/rnd/itech/doc/dist-obj/comdoc/fsvca.html#filesIfaceAssignFileref

And passing a hardcoded fileref of OUTFILE.

The documentation on that method is a little skimpy. It seems to imply it KIND OF works like the FILENAME() function in actual SAS code where if you pass it an empty fileref it will make up a fileref and pass the name it made up back. But the link above seems to also say that for some strange reason perhaps that only works when the access method is TEMP? That seems like a poor design. When not just work the same way as the FILRENAME() function does?

Anyway if the AssignFileref method does not support generating a unique name for the fileref then perhaps the SAS extension for VSCODE can take on that responcibility.

At a minumum this restriction on being allowed to use OUTFILE as a fileref in the SAS code you run should be clearly documented.

[scnwwu]

Thanks for pointing out the problem. Converted to issue #868