What will happen if you do not use a RUN statement after a PROC step?

When a RUN statement is omitted after a PROC step in SAS, the procedure may still execute, but the results will not be printed immediately to the output window. This behavior occurs because the RUN statement serves as a signal to SAS to complete and process the preceding step. Without it, SAS defers the execution of the procedure until a RUN statement is encountered later in the program.

Therefore, while the procedure runs in the background, the results won’t be visible to the user until the execution is finalized with a subsequent RUN statement. This is particularly relevant in batch processing, where a user might submit a long series of commands, and the final output will not appear until all steps have been executed and finalized with appropriate RUN statements.

The incorrect options indicate misunderstandings of how SAS handles code execution and syntax. It is essential to remember that the absence of a RUN statement does not leave the dataset in an erroneous state or corrupt; it simply delays the output of the results.