topic How to define macro variables in a loop in SAS Programming

How to define macro variables in a loop

sasstats — Fri, 19 Jul 2019 13:57:06 GMT

Hello alltogether,

I do have a list of variable names, say: %let test_var=%nrstr(age sex biologica);

Actually this list is much longer.

For each Variable I want to create new variable names like MW_age MW_sex MW_biologica to use them late in my program.

I trie to do this with a macro-loop.

But the problem I do have is that only MW_age is known in the end of the macro and mean_sex and mean_biologica are unknown outside the macro.

What do I have to do, to have all macro-variables available in the end?

Regards sasstats

Here is my program:

%let test_var=%nrstr(age sex biologica);
%macro test_loop;
	%let i=1;
	%let var=%scan(&test_var.,&i.,' '); 

	%do %While("&var." NE "");
		%put &var.;
		%let MW_var_&i=MW_&var.;
		%put &&MW_Var_&i.;

		%let i=%eval(&i.+1);
		%let var=%scan(&test_var.,&i.,' ');
	%end;
/* here all 3 macro-variables are known */
%put &MW_var_1.;
%put &MW_var_2.;
%put &MW_var_3.;
%mend test_loop;
%test_loop;

/* here only MW_age is known, the others not */
%put &MW_var_1.;
%put &MW_var_2.;
%put &MW_var_3.;

Re: How to define macro variables in a loop

PaigeMiller — Fri, 19 Jul 2019 14:04:42 GMT

The macro variables you create inside the macro TEST_LOOP are only available inside the macro. When you try to use them outside the macro, you can't, and an error results.

You can overcome this by putting all the code that uses these variables inside the macro TEST_LOOP; or by using the %GLOBAL command inside of TEST_LOOP, which allows the %GLOBAL macro variables to be used outside of the macro.

Re: How to define macro variables in a loop

sasstats — Mon, 22 Jul 2019 08:54:34 GMT

Hey,

thank you very much for your information!

Using the further syntax inside my macro works fine!

sasstats