topic Re: how to count number of macro variables without executing code in SAS Programming

how to count number of macro variables without executing code

thanikondharish — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 09:04:37 GMT

%let a=10 ;

%let b=20 ;

%let c=30 ;

I am creating 3 macro variables a,b,c so with out executing above code how to do like how many macro

variables are present in that code (don't use _user_, sashelp.vmacro)

answer is 3

Re: how to count number of macro variables without executing code

andreas_lds — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 09:42:59 GMT

@thanikondharish wrote:

%let a=10 ;

%let b=20 ;

%let c=30 ;

I am creating 3 macro variables a,b,c so with out executing above code how to do like how many macro

variables are present in that code (don't use _user_, sashelp.vmacro)

answer is 3

you may want to rephrase your post, so that the question you have is clear.

Re: how to count number of macro variables without executing code

ballardw — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 09:46:07 GMT

Why the artificial "can't use" restriction?

Do you know how to read a text file? The program is text. Read it into a data set. Then Parse the data for the string "%let" to count the number of times that string is found would find your example.

Re: how to count number of macro variables without executing code

Astounding — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 13:55:33 GMT

You will need to set some boundaries on the problem. How complex can the code get? For example, consider:

%let start = 10;
%let finish = 15;
%do i=&start %to &finish;
   %let var&i = 0;
%end;

Do you want to count that this code has 8 %let statements (2 before the loop, 6 inside the loop)? Do you want to count &i which may be created but not with a %let statement?