topic Re: Concatenated Variable Name in Macro in SAS Programming

Concatenated Variable Name in Macro

DavidPhillips2 — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 15:00:18 GMT

%macro createGradRetRowsSummaryLines(stud_type, cohortYearCount, cohortYearCount2, gradOrRen, retOrGrad, firstTime);
if cohort=201510 and DisplayColumn="&cohortYearCount2 Year &gradOrRen of &stud_type" then _2014_15b=&retOrGrad._percent;
%mend;

Why is Enterprise Guide throwing an error when I use &retOrGrad._percent should it read this as variable || _percent and query the variable name that matches the concatenation?

ERROR 22-322: Syntax error, expecting one of the following: a name, a quoted string, a numeric constant, a datetime constant, a missing value, INPUT, PUT.

Re: Concatenated Variable Name in Macro

PaigeMiller — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 15:04:59 GMT

Please re-run your code with OPTIONS MPRINT; as the first line of the program.

Show us the full SAS log, not just the error messages. Paste the log into the window that appears when the you click on the {i} icon (do not paste your log directly into your reply)

Re: Concatenated Variable Name in Macro

Tom — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 15:10:56 GMT

Has the value in the macro variable been macro quoted?

Perhaps that is causing the parser to see that as two tokens.

Try adding %UNQUOTE() function.

_2014_15b=%unquote(&retOrGrad._percent)

Re: Concatenated Variable Name in Macro

ballardw — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 15:37:29 GMT

@DavidPhillips2 wrote:

%macro createGradRetRowsSummaryLines(stud_type, cohortYearCount, cohortYearCount2, gradOrRen, retOrGrad, firstTime);
if cohort=201510 and DisplayColumn="&cohortYearCount2 Year &gradOrRen of &stud_type" then _2014_15b=&retOrGrad._percent;
%mend;

Why is Enterprise Guide throwing an error when I use &retOrGrad._percent should it read this as variable || _percent and query the variable name that matches the concatenation?

ERROR 22-322: Syntax error, expecting one of the following: a name, a quoted string, a numeric constant, a datetime constant, a missing value, INPUT, PUT.

You don't even show the code used to call the macro. So we don't see what possible values your macro variable might have.

My guess is that something in &retorgrad is not valid in a SAS variable name or the length of the result exceeds 32 characters and is not a valid variable name after the concatenation.