topic Re: Retain Keyword in Macro. in New SAS User

Retain Keyword in Macro.

jaiganesh — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 21:20:31 GMT

Hello,

Can we use Retain Keyword in Macro ? I believe not, Just wanted to confirm, if not what would be it's alternative for Macro to do incremental addition

Regards,

Jaiganesh

Re: Retain Keyword in Macro.

novinosrin — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 21:25:37 GMT

May I ask where, when and why would the subject of Retain appear in a text processing facility that doesn't process PDV or in other words execution that's done by the datastep compiler. If you answer the 3 W's , that will help.

Re: Retain Keyword in Macro.

Kurt_Bremser — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 21:50:59 GMT

You do not, I repeat NOT, process data with the macro preprocessor, which is there only for making code dynamic, if such is needed.

Your question therefore shows a complete cluelessness about the subject. You need to deepen your understanding of the Base SAS language quite a lot before you even think about macros.

Re: Retain Keyword in Macro.

Tom — Thu, 04 Apr 2019 03:51:19 GMT

You can use a macro program to generate any SAS code (or any other text for that matter) so I don't see any reason why would have any trouble generating a RETAIN statement. Or for that matter use the word RETAIN as a the name of a variable or macro variable.

Re: Retain Keyword in Macro.

FreelanceReinh — Thu, 04 Apr 2019 12:13:40 GMT

@jaiganesh wrote:

Retain Keyword (...) what would be it's alternative for Macro to do incremental addition

Hello @jaiganesh,

The primary purpose of the RETAIN statement in the DATA step is to prevent certain variables from being reset to missing at the beginning of a new iteration of the DATA step (implied loop).

In a SAS macro:

there is neither an implied loop nor a mechanism that automatically (iteratively) clears macro variables.
Incremental additions (if any) would typically occur in a %DO loop and don't require anything similar to a RETAIN statement (which wouldn't be needed even in an analogous DATA step DO loop anyway).

Example:

%macro test;
%let s=0;
%do i=20 %to 40 %by 10;
  %let s=%eval(&s+&i);
%end;
%put &=s; /* result: 90 */
%mend test;

%test