topic Re: How to save a value of a variable in an exeternal file in SAS Programming

How to save a value of a variable in an exeternal file

garag — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 13:12:03 GMT

Hi,

I have the following need.

I have a varible XXX and I would save the value of this variable in an external file. If I do something like this:

data _null_;

file 'outup.txt';

put XXX;

run;

The file is empty and if I do this

data _null_;

file 'outup.txt';

put &XXX;

run;

I get an error. Do there is a way to save the value of a variable in a file?

Many thanks

Re: How to save a value of a variable in an exeternal file

PGStats — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 13:37:12 GMT

If variable XXX comes from a dataset, you should refer to it (i.e. SET MYDATASET; ) . If it is a macro variable, you should assign it to a variable (i.e. XXX="&XXX"; put XXX; ) or use quotes in the put statement (i.e. put "&XXX"; )

Re: How to save a value of a variable in an exeternal file

Cynthia_sas — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 14:23:49 GMT

Hi: As PG has explained, you must point to a SAS dataset in order to use a variable name in a PUT statement (unless you are creating the variable in your program).

The program below writes the NAME variable from SASHELP.CLASS to a flat file for only the students with an AGE that is GE 15.

cynthia

data _null_;

set sashelp.class;

where age ge 15;

file 'c:\temp\myflatfile.txt';

put name;

run;

Then if you open MYFLATFILE.TXT with Notepad, you will see the 5 students with ages greater than or equal to 15 in SASHELP.CLASS:

Janet

Mary

Ronald

William

Philip