topic Re: Problem reading string with a single quote in SAS Programming

Problem reading string with a single quote

garag — Fri, 31 May 2013 14:58:38 GMT

Hi,

I'm trying to set a variable reading from a dataset some clumns value that should contains strange char as a single quote (') or &.

example:

data inputds;
   aaa = "aaa'aaa";
   bbb = 'bbb';
   ccc = "ccc'ccc'ccc";
   ddd = 'dd&dd';
run;

proc sql noprint;
select aaa, bbb, ccc, ddd into :vara, :varb, :varc, :vard from inputds;
quit;

If I run
%put &vara;
%put &varb;
%put &varc;
%put &vard;

Sas does not work. Do there is a way to populate some variables in a safety way independently by what is is contains?

Many thanks

Regards,

Antonio

Re: Problem reading string with a single quote

Astounding — Fri, 31 May 2013 15:16:43 GMT

You can always get tricky characters into macro variables,. As you have found out, utilizing them later may be difficult.

Just to display them, you can use:

%put %superq(vara);

%put %superq(varb);

%put %superq(varc);

%put %superq(vard);

In general, macro quoting functions such as %SUPERQ can temporarily mask the tricky characters. Depending on how you want to use these values, you might need different quoting functions at various points within your code.

Good luck.