SAS V8 Transport File Error Message

[SFJohnson24]

currently when the XPT reader class goes to read the xpt files, it expects XPT5 format. Engine should be enhanced to read and parse V8 into pandas/parquet files. The metadata reader classes may also might need to be updated

it appears pandas https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/blob/7d8f5bdb4e165b13186385d0720d921358ad84d6/pandas/io/sas/sas_xport.py#L35 does not have V8 headers in acceptable read_sas() parsing.
This leads to this error when a V8 SAS transport file is given.

A/C: better error handling when a v8 XPT file is given. We can revisit the origin issue of parsing V8 if we decide to support the format later on

[JozefAerts]

I don't think we should support SAS Transport 8. It may bring agencies such as NMPA (China) to the idea to boycot/ignore Dataset-JSON-1-1 and start requiring SAS Transport 8 to solve their problems with Transport 5.
What I think should be done (personal opinion) is that when Transport 8 is read, the error is catched, and a message is provided that this format is not supported.

[SFJohnson24]

This ticket has been changed for an error message as well as an update to the readme to state we do not currently support V8.

A/C: use the library to read the header and check the version; throw an error if the header matches the V8 firstline
update readme to say engine uses V5

[gerrycampion]

@eljanssens do you have any sample sas xpt v8 sample files so that we can handle the error it causes?

[eljanssens]

@gerrycampion we don't work with sas xpt v8 formats in house, only v5 (due regulatory requirements). I'm asking internally to convert the cdisc samples v5 to v8.
Can you access the sample in below comment?

[eljanssens]

SAS xpt v8.zip

[JozefAerts]

I can't either ... I am living "SAS-free" ... ;-)