topic Macro Question in SAS Programming

Macro Question

robertrao — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 20:07:31 GMT

%let mo=Aug (every moth i change it i the %let stmnt)

if the current month is Aug will it translate to what I showed by the arrow?????

data want1;

set have_&mo;----------->have_Aug(does it requre a dot after &mo??)

run;

data want2;

set have_&mo.13; ----->have_Aug13(does it require d double dot after &mo?????)

run;

Thanks

Re: Macro Question

ballardw — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 20:37:33 GMT

A dot after &mo in the first case is a style choice. With no addtional text to append to the macro variable resolved value notthing much happens.

In the second case you do not want to add two dots at the value would resolve to have_Aug.13 which would be treated as a library named have_Aug and dataset named 13. You generally only want to have one dot UNLESS you are appending another dot for syntax purposes such as in liberary.dataset or filename.ext.