topic Re: how to make a histogram inside a macro in SAS Programming

how to make a histogram inside a macro

blakeellis18 — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 04:46:13 GMT

hi all,

I'm trying to create a histogram inside of a macro that uses a parameter variable of &Vbl. Does anyone know how to do this? my current code is:

%MACRO HistandStats ( DSNm = , Vbl = , Stats = N MEAN STDDEV ,
Ndec = 1);

TITLE1 "Histogram for &Vbl from Data Set &DSNm";
proc univariate data = work.DSNm;
histogram &Vbl;
run;

but this doesn't seem to work when I set DSNm and Vbl to specific values! thanks in advance.

Re: how to make a histogram inside a macro

ballardw — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 04:58:09 GMT

If you intend to reference the data set with the DSNM macro variable then you need an & in front of DSNm. Since you currently are likely not referencing a data set then the variable &VBL is not found.

Instead of fixing the library name as you do with this code:

proc univariate data = work.DSNm;

it is usually a better idea to use

proc univariate data = &DSNm.;

And then if desired you can pass the library name if needed in the macro call.

&HistandStats ( DSNm = mylib.somedateset, vbl= <other parameters you want);

Re: how to make a histogram inside a macro

blakeellis18 — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 05:04:18 GMT

yes thank you! I completely missed the "&" in front of DSNm. and I took your advice and changed it to &DSNm. instead of work.&DSNm and it worked. Thanks again!