Resolving FIND in macro

Davanden — Wed, 20 May 2020 15:40:08 GMT

I am trying to use a macro to parse some strings. This simplified code is supposed to find the rightmost underscore. However, the Index is resolved as zero:

%macro resolveindex;
%let thisvar = PriPrb_SUM;
%LET Index = %SYSFUNC(FIND("&ThisVar.","_",-33));
%mend;

Since I know that macro variables are always character, I tried this:

%LET Index = %SYSFUNC(PUT(FIND("&ThisVar.","_",-33),2.);

However, I get an error message that PUT function is unknown.

How do I get this to work?

Re: Resolving FIND in macro

ballardw — Wed, 20 May 2020 15:59:00 GMT

%let thisvar = PriPrb_SUM;
%LET Index = %SYSFUNC(FIND(&ThisVar.,_,-33));

%put &index.;

Quotes in macro calls to data step functions are usually not needed since the macro processor treats everything as character.

The function to examine a macro variable is %put.

If you want to use the data step Put functions with %sysfunc you need to use either PUTN or PUTC explicitly.

Note: if your Thisvar might have commas then you have another issue as it would be interpreted as a delimiter in the function call and you would need to use on of the macro quoting functions to have the comma ignored in the Find function.

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Resolving FIND in macro

Re: Resolving FIND in macro