topic WARNING: Apparent symbolic reference BIGN1 not resolved. in SAS Programming

WARNING: Apparent symbolic reference BIGN1 not resolved.

Miracle — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 04:44:48 GMT

Happy New Year to you all.
I have the following in a macro containing proc report but it says - WARNING: Apparent symbolic reference BIGN1 not resolved. Same goes to BIGN2, BIGN3 and BIGN4.

data _null_;  
	set bign03(where=(cond1=&sub1 and cond2='&sub2')); 
	call symput('bign' || strip(put(tx,8.)), trim(left(put(bign,8.))));
run;

proc report ...;
...;
...;

  define tx1 / display width=20 'A#   N=%trim(&bign1)';
  define tx2 / display width=20 'B#   N=%trim(&bign2)';
  define tx3 / display width=20 'B#   N=%trim(&bign3)';
  define tx4 / display width=20 '   Total#   N=%trim(&bign4)';
...;
run;

I tested by conditioning on cond1=1 and cond2='A' and running it outside of the macro and it runs without this warning or errors.
I don't understand why. Could you please advise what have I not done right here?
Thanking you in advance.

Re: WARNING: Apparent symbolic reference BIGN1 not resolved.

Tom — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 05:14:39 GMT

Check your SAS log for the notes. In particular the notes from the DATA _NULL_ step that is creating the macro variables. It will most likely show that zero observations were read from the BIGN03 dataset.

That is because I suspect that you wanted the WHERE= dataset option to compare the value of the variable COND2 to the value of the macro variable SUB2. Instead you tested if the variable COND2 literally match the string '&sub2'. This is because macro code inside of single quotes is ignored. Use double quote characters instead.

data _null_;
  set bign03 ;
  where cond1=&sub1 and cond2="&sub2";
  call symputx(cats('bign',tx),bign);
run;

proc report ... ; 
  define tx1 / display width=20 "A# N=&bign1"; 
  define tx2 / display width=20 "B# N=&bign2"; 
  define tx3 / display width=20 "B# N=&bign3";
  define tx4 / display width=20 "Total# N=&bign4"; 
  ...
run;

Re: WARNING: Apparent symbolic reference BIGN1 not resolved.

Miracle — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 06:20:53 GMT

Thanks @Tom for your quick response.
It is now working after replacing the single quote to double quotes.
Thanks again.