topic Re: problem with resolving macro variable in SAS Programming

problem with resolving macro variable

kostek — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:27:48 GMT

Hi all

I've got a problem with following simple program:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

%macro convertToWhere(string,from,to);

%let return=%str();

%do i=1 %to %length(&string);

%let character=%quote(%substr(&string,&i,1));

%if("&character" = "&from") %then
%let character = &to;

%let return=&return&character;

%end;

%bquote(')&return%bquote(');

%mend;

%let list=Alfred*Alice*Barbara;

%let where=%convertToWhere(&list,*,' ');

data _null_;

set SASHELP.CLASS;
where NAME in ( &where );

run;

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Macro variable "where" should return text 'Alfred' 'Alice' 'Barbara' and it actually does! but I have no Idea why I get this error:

Line generated by macro variable "WHERE".
1 'Alfred' 'Alice' 'Barbara'
-
22
-
76

Syntax error while parsing WHERE clause.

When I declere variable where manually
%let where= 'Alfred' 'Alice' 'Barbara';
data step works fine.

So it seems that the problem is in converting macro...have You any idea ??

Thanks for help.

Re: problem with resolving macro variable

Peter_C — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:34:35 GMT

try %unquote() as you use the generated string

Re: problem with resolving macro variable

kostek — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:53:15 GMT

thanks for reply

do You mean:

data _null_;

set SASHELP.CLASS;
where in ( %unquote(&where) );

run;

?
still not working... Message was edited by: kostek

Re: problem with resolving macro variable

art297 — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:41:58 GMT

I think it will work it you both change your single quotes to double quotes and then appy Peter's suggestion. E.g.:

%macro convertToWhere(string,from,to);

%let return=%str();

%do i=1 %to %length(&string);

%let character=%quote(%substr(&string,&i,1));

%if("&character" = "&from") %then
%let character = &to;

%let return=&return&character;

%end;

%bquote(")&return%bquote(");

%mend;

%let list=Alfred*Alice*Barbara;

%let where=%convertToWhere(&list,*," ");

data _null_;
set SASHELP.CLASS;
where NAME in ( %unquote(&where.));
run;

HTH,
Art

Re: problem with resolving macro variable

data_null__ — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:00:12 GMT

That's interesting it works on my SAS 9.1.3 for windows.

Would you care to tell us how you intend to use this. I ask because, I used to write similar code to do various tasks that I though I needed for processing list of words contained in macro variables. I was all very enjoyable until I reaslize that most of that could be more effectively using tools that SAS already provides in the data step or with procs.

You could also do away with the macro that iterates over each character LIST with a rather elaborate assignment statement.

[pre]
3066 %let where = %qsysfunc(translate(%qsysfunc(tranwrd(%superQ(LIST),%str(*),%str('
3066! ')),$QUOTE1024.),%str(%"),%str(%')));
3067 %put NOTE: %superQ(where);
NOTE: "Alfred" "Alice" "Barbara"
[/pre]

[pre]
2995 %macro convertToWhere(string,from,to);
2996 %let return=%str();
2997 %do i=1 %to %length(&string);
2998 %let character=%quote(%substr(&string,&i,1));
2999 %if("&character" = "&from") %then
3000 %let character = &to;
3001 %let return=&return&character;
3002 %end;
3003 %bquote(')&return%bquote(');
3004 %mend;
3005
3006 %let list=Alfred*Alice*Barbara;
3007 %let where=%convertToWhere(&list,*,' ');
3008 %put NOTE: %superQ(where);
NOTE: 'Alfred' 'Alice' 'Barbara'
3009
3010 data _null_;
3011 set SASHELP.CLASS;
3012 where NAME in ( %unquote(&where) );
3013 run;

NOTE: There were 3 observations read from the data set SASHELP.CLASS.
WHERE NAME in ('Alfred', 'Alice', 'Barbara');
[/pre]

Re: problem with resolving macro variable

kostek — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 06:09:09 GMT

Thanks Art - You're right, It works with double quotation 🙂

data _null_; respect 🙂 this solution looks good for me and I agree it's sometimes better to use sas tools than write own strange progs which eventually don't work properly 😉

Thanks a lot
kostek

Re: problem with resolving macro variable

art297 — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 13:52:22 GMT

FWIW, I was wrong! It would have worked with either single or double quotes.

Art

Re: problem with resolving macro variable

PatrickG — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 16:52:32 GMT

For this line you'd need double quotes because the SAS Macro Facility won't look inside of single-quoted strings.

%bquote(')&return%bquote(');

Re: problem with resolving macro variable

chang_y_chung_hotmail_com — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 19:17:13 GMT

It is well documented that the macro quoting may confuse the tokenizer. Read the last paragraph about this happening with a %bquote()'ed quotation mark here. Time to time, we may have to explicitly %unquote().

Maybe this is one of the reasons why we have this convention of naming a macro with a "q" prefix when it returns a macro quoted string. (For instance, %qTrim(), %qSubstr(), ...)

Another way to prevent this problem is just to return an unquoted string instead. For your problem, I would rather write two simple macros with more explicit names like below. HTH.

%*-- single quote --*;

%macro squote(str);

%if %superq(str)= %then %return;

%local s;

%let s = %str(%');

%unquote(&s%sysfunc(tranwrd(&str,&s,&s&s))&s)

%mend squote;

%*-- comma separated quoted values --*;

%macro csqv(list, dlm=*);

%if %superq(list)= %then %return;

%local i item;

%let i = 1;

%let item = %qscan(&list, &i);

%do %while (&item ^=);

%if &i > 1 %then %*;,;

%*;%squote(&item)

%let i = %eval(&i + 1);

%let item = %qscan(&list, &i);

%end;

%mend csqv;

%*-- check --*;

proc print data=sashelp.class;

where name in (%csqv(Alfred*Alice*Barbara));

run;

/* on lst

Obs Name Sex Age Height Weight

1 Alfred M 14 69.0 112.5

2 Alice F 13 56.5 84.0

3 Barbara F 13 65.3 98.0