topic Re: ERROR 78-322: Expecting a '.' in SAS Programming

ERROR 78-322: Expecting a '.'

mhoolsema — Wed, 04 Mar 2020 18:39:22 GMT

I am trying to do a simple SQL join and keep getting this error message. I'm can't figure what is wrong with my query that is causing the error. Where is there a missing period?


proc sql;
	create table included_var as
		select a.NAME, b.field_name
		from varlist as a left join dictionary as b
		on a.NAME = b.field_name
	;
quit;

I get the following message in my log:

2003
2004
2005  proc sql;
2006      create table included_var as
2007          select a.NAME, b.field_name
2008          from varlist as a left join dictionary as b
                                                     --
                                                     78
ERROR 78-322: Expecting a '.'.

2009          on a.NAME = b.field_name
1     .
      -
      78
      200
1     .
      -
      78
      200
1     .
      -
      78
      76
ERROR 78-322: Expecting a '.'.

ERROR 200-322: The symbol is not recognized and will be ignored.

ERROR 76-322: Syntax error, statement will be ignored.

2010      ;
2011  quit;
NOTE: The SAS System stopped processing this step because of errors.
NOTE: PROCEDURE SQL used (Total process time):
      real time           0.01 seconds
      cpu time            0.00 seconds

Re: ERROR 78-322: Expecting a '.'

PaigeMiller — Wed, 04 Mar 2020 18:41:19 GMT

I think the word DICTIONARY is reserved by SQL, and you can't use it as the name of a SAS data set.

Re: ERROR 78-322: Expecting a '.'

mhoolsema — Wed, 04 Mar 2020 18:53:30 GMT

That was it! I changed the name of the dataset to DATA_DICTIONARY and it worked fine.

Re: ERROR 78-322: Expecting a '.'

PaigeMiller — Wed, 04 Mar 2020 18:55:27 GMT

@mhoolsema

I haven't tried this, but I believe that WORK.DICTIONARY should work properly.

Re: ERROR 78-322: Expecting a '.'

s_lassen — Wed, 04 Mar 2020 18:57:23 GMT

More precisely, the SQL interpreter expects e.g. "dictionary.tables" or "dictionary.columns" when encountering the token "dictionary". You could probably also get away with referring to your dictionary table as "work.dictionary".