topic Re: Getting N-th (position) of a macro variable in New SAS User

Getting N-th (position) of a macro variable

tonoplast — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 05:03:17 GMT

Dear SAS community,

I am struggling to find the answer to something that may be a simple thing. Please help.

I have a macro variable:

%let variablenames = AAA BBB CCC DDD EEE FFF GGG;

If I want to find what position of CCC which will show as 3. How can I achieve this?

Thank you for your help.

Regards,

Re: Getting N-th (position) of a macro variable

PeterClemmensen — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 05:18:36 GMT

%let variablenames = AAA BBB CCC DDD EEE FFF GGG;

data _null_;
   result=findw("&variablenames.","CCC"," ","E");
   put result=;
run;

Re: Getting N-th (position) of a macro variable

tonoplast — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 05:33:00 GMT

Thank you very much! This was what I was looking for!

I didn't specify but I wanted to put it in a separate macro variable, so I added some lines to your code.

%let variablenames = AAA BBB CCC DDD EEE FFF GGG;

data _null_;
result=findw("&variablenames.","CCC"," ","E");
put result=; call symput("thisnum",result);
run;

%put thisnum = &thisnum;

Regards,

Re: Getting N-th (position) of a macro variable

PeterClemmensen — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 05:36:11 GMT

Ah ok 🙂 Anyway, glad you found your answer

Re: Getting N-th (position) of a macro variable

ballardw — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 17:46:36 GMT

@tonoplast wrote:

Thank you very much! This was what I was looking for!

I didn't specify but I wanted to put it in a separate macro variable, so I added some lines to your code.

%let variablenames = AAA BBB CCC DDD EEE FFF GGG;

data _null_;
result=findw("&variablenames.","CCC"," ","E");
put result=; call symput("thisnum",result);
run;

%put thisnum = &thisnum;

Regards,

T

You can use the macro function %sysfunc to call data step functions

%let thisnum = %sysfunc(findw(&variablenames.,CCC,%str(' ') ,E));

%put &thisnum.;

Note that the quotes are needed in the macro language except when a specific blank is needed for some functions.

Re: Getting N-th (position) of a macro variable

tonoplast — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 00:31:35 GMT

Thank you! This is great!