topic Re: do NOT resolve this macro! in SAS Programming

do NOT resolve this macro!

steve_citi — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:11:50 GMT

I am using SAS to write SAS code to a external dataset, which will later be brougt in by using a %include.

The SAS code being written contains macro calls.

I was very surprised to find that SAS was trying to resolve the macro call as I was writing it to the external file. Obviously not the ime I want this to occur.

How do I prevent SAS from trying to resolve these macro calls while I am writing the code to the external file?

Re: do NOT resolve this macro!

SASJedi — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 02:29:49 GMT

Could you post a sample of the code that's giving you problems? This code writes SAS macro code to an external text file, and doesn't resolve until the later %INCLUDE.

 
data _null_;
   file 'test.txt';
   put '%PUT NOTE: The date is %sysfunc(today(),mmddyy10.);';
run;
/* Open and read the text file - the macro code is not yet resolved... */

%include 'test.txt';

do NOT resolve this macro!

Ksharp — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 03:20:32 GMT

Or You can turn Macro language off before starting SAS by using

options nomacro;

SAS option MACRO is valid only at startup of the SAS System or startup of a SAS

process. The SAS option is ignored.

Another way is to use macro quote functions to mask these maro variables.

Ksharp

Re: do NOT resolve this macro!

ballardw — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:51:31 GMT

You don't say how you are writing the text file. If using PUT statements I would suspect something that should be quoted isn't. The other is the difference between "%somemacrotext" and '%somemacrotext' where the first will attempt to resolve and the second doesn't.

do NOT resolve this macro!

Saugata — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:37:03 GMT

This certainly helped my case