topic Macro variable creation with %global in SAS Programming

Macro variable creation with %global

MBKo — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 18:59:48 GMT

Taking an example from a SAS book: The code is: %global %scan(&varlist, &wrd)max;

Say, %scan(&varlist, &wrd) evaluates to 'age'.

The %global statement then creates the macro variable 'agemax'.

I cannot find documentation that tells me that this %global statement concatenates the results of %scan with 'max'. Can anybody point me to that?

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 19:21:28 GMT

In macro language, this

%scan(&varlist, &wrd)max

is the concatenation.

Tom — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 19:39:18 GMT

Once the macro processor has finished processing something like:

%scan(age sex race,1)max

The resulting string "agemax" is then used in evaluating the larger expression it is part of. So

%global %scan(age sex race,1)max ;

Becomes

%global agemax ;

This type of text substitution is the exactly what "macro processors" are used for in any language, whether it is SAS , assembly or C.