topic Re: How to call a macro variable that is created within another macro in SAS Programming

How to call a marco variable that is created within another macro

LL5 — Tue, 12 May 2020 18:27:51 GMT

I need to call two macro variables which are created within another macro. However, I got the following warning message saying Apparent symbolic reference not resovled.

What I am trying to do is to create a macro variable for the total count of the item and put the number of count in the log.

%MACRO C(VAR,COUNT_VAR,FILTER);

PROC SQL ;

SELECT COUNT(&VAR) INTO: &COUNT_VAR

FROM table2

WHERE &FILTER;

QUIT;

%MEND;

%C(Unsuccessful_item, COUNT_U,Unsuccessful_item EQ "Yes");

%C(Late_item,COUNT_L,Late_item EQ "Yes");

%PUT &COUNT_U &COUNT_L;

WARNING: Apparent symbolic reference COUNT_U not resolved.

WARNING: Apparent symbolic reference COUNT_L not resolved.

If I do this in two separate steps, I am able to run through. However, in real work situation, I need to do this in macro, can anyone advice. Thanks.

PROC SQL ;

SELECT COUNT(Unsuccessful_item) INTO: COUNT_U

FROM table2

WHERE Unsuccessful_item EQ "Yes";

QUIT;

PROC SQL ;

SELECT COUNT(Late_item) INTO: COUNT_L

FROM table2

WHERE Late_item EQ "Yes";

QUIT;

%PUT &COUNT_U &COUNT_L;

38 %PUT &COUNT_U &COUNT_L;

SYMBOLGEN: Macro variable COUNT_U resolves to 13

SYMBOLGEN: Macro variable COUNT_L resolves to 25

13 25

Re: How to call a marco variable that is created within another macro

ballardw — Tue, 12 May 2020 18:35:56 GMT

Without details of how you expect to use the variables there aren't a lot of options.

The basic approach if you need to use a macro variable created out of the current scope is often to make the macro variable a global value. That would be done with the %global statement :

%global sometext;

would create a macro variable sometext that is available everywhere in the current session.

It will be up to you to make sure that you don't reuse macro variable names.

This is not a trivial subject. You will want to look up scope of macro variables in documentation.

Re: How to call a macro variable that is created within another macro

PaigeMiller — Tue, 12 May 2020 19:46:01 GMT

%MACRO C(VAR,COUNT_VAR,FILTER);

PROC SQL ;

SELECT COUNT(&VAR) INTO: &COUNT_VAR

FROM table2

WHERE &FILTER;

QUIT;

%MEND;

%C(Unsuccessful_item, COUNT_U,Unsuccessful_item EQ "Yes");

%C(Late_item,COUNT_L,Late_item EQ "Yes");

%PUT &COUNT_U &COUNT_L;

WARNING: Apparent symbolic reference COUNT_U not resolved.

WARNING: Apparent symbolic reference COUNT_L not resolved.

Macro scoping. Since &COUNT_U is created inside the macro %C, it has value inside the macro, but does not exist outside %C, and so your %PUT is referring to a macro variable that does not exist. You can either make &COUNT_U and &COUNT_L global using the %global command, or use the %PUT inside the macro.

Example:

%MACRO C(VAR,COUNT_VAR,FILTER);
%global &count_var;
/* The rest of your macro goes here */
%mend;