topic Re: Count number words in macro variable in SAS Programming

Count number words in macro variable

AlexeyS — Thu, 22 Aug 2019 18:27:00 GMT

Suppose my macro variable contain three words : "Word One" Word2 "Word Three";

%varlist = "Word One" Word2 "Word Three";

%macro do_all;

%do i=1 %to %sysfunc(countw(&varlist ));

%let term=%scan(&varlist, &i);

%put &term;

%end;

%mend;

My problem that some variable names consist of two words that separated by blank and this code doesn't work.

Thank you

My problem, that some variable names consist of two words that separated by blank.

Re: Count number words in macro variable

FreelanceReinh — Thu, 22 Aug 2019 18:40:40 GMT

Hi @AlexeyS,

Use the "q" modifier of both the COUNTW function and the %SCAN function to ignore the blanks inside quotation marks:

%macro do_all;
%do i=1 %to %sysfunc(countw(&varlist, %str( ), q));
  %let term=%scan(&varlist, &i, %str( ), q);
  %put &term;
%end;
%mend;

Re: Count number words in macro variable

PaigeMiller — Thu, 22 Aug 2019 18:57:37 GMT

I point out that there's almost never a need to have macro variable values with quotes around them, and its just not a good idea. (What would you do with some of these macro variable words that have quotes around them and others that do not?)

A better idea would be to have macro variable values without the quotes around them, and a delimiter of some special character.

%macro do_all;
%let varlist = Word One~Word2~Word Three;

%do i=1 %to %sysfunc(countw(&varlist,~));
    %let term=%scan(&varlist,&i,~);
    %put &=term;
%end;
%mend;