topic Re: Loop Over Multiple Variables, with Multiple Outputs in SAS Programming

Loop Over Multiple Variables, with Multiple Outputs

jjb123 — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 06:55:38 GMT

This is probably a question that has been asked many times and answered, but I'm not finding the info I want. I want to do something like the following and would love some advice (or even links to the question being answered). I basically want to be able to do something like this while being able to just list multiple variables at the top (like %let variable = x, y, z, etc.). So I want it to be able to loop through multiple variables and perform the same procedures and give the different outputs.

%let variable = x;

/*then do data manipulations, etc*/

proc export data = xyz outfile = "C:\Users\person\Desktop\'&variable'.dta" replace;
run;

Re: Loop Over Multiple Variables, with Multiple Outputs

PeterClemmensen — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 07:25:49 GMT

You can do something along these lines

data callstack;
   length string $500;
   do var='x', 'y', 'z';
   string=compbl(cats(
      "
      proc export data = xyz outfile = 'C:\Users\person\Desktop\", var, ".dta' replace;
      run;
      "
      ));
   output;
   call execute(string);
   end;
run;

Re: Loop Over Multiple Variables, with Multiple Outputs

jjb123 — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 20:03:41 GMT

Thanks for the response. However, there are hundreds of lines of data manipulations that I perform on each variable, so using call execute gets very messy very quickly. Do you have any other suggestions?

Re: Loop Over Multiple Variables, with Multiple Outputs

PaigeMiller — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 20:08:14 GMT

Then you need a macro with nested %DO loops for the multiple variables. Since you have not provided any more details, there's really not much detail I can provide back to you.