topic Re: How do I see/find macro code stored in another file/location? in SAS Programming

How do I see/find macro code stored in another file/location?

Datino — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 19:43:54 GMT

Hello,

I inherited some code that has some macros in it that I do not know exactly what they do. Also, I don't know where the code for these macros is stored. How do I find it? also, when I run the code with the mystery macros in it, I don't get details of the macro's execution in the log. Is there a way to enable it?

Thanks.

Re: How do I see/find macro code stored in another file/location?

HB — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 19:58:06 GMT

See Bruno's answer here for part of that.

https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Programming/Finding-Location-of-SAS-Macros/td-p/292642

Re: How do I see/find macro code stored in another file/location?

sbxkoenk — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 21:21:15 GMT

Hello,

It could be the creator of these macros uses the STORED COMPILED MACRO FACILITY.

That saves the compiled macros to a catalog in a (permanent) library upon submitting the macro definition. You cannot open and read such a compiled macro catalog entry.

Check

proc options group=macro; run;

to see if mstored and sasmstore= are "activated".

To get info on the macro execution in the LOG, put these options before the macro call.

options mprint mlogic symbolgen;

Koen

Re: How do I see/find macro code stored in another file/location?

Tom — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 21:27:50 GMT

If you can actually run the macros and they are using SAS autocall then this macro might help.

https://github.com/sasutils/macros/blob/master/maclist.sas

So run your macro, let's pretend it is named MYMACRO, then run the MACLIST macro and then look at the dataset it generated.

%mymacro;
%maclist;
proc print data=maclist;
run;

Re: How do I see/find macro code stored in another file/location?

AllanBowe — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 12:53:43 GMT

This is a common challenge when debugging applications. To avoid this kind of problem in the future, you might want to consider the SASjs approach - where all source code is managed locally, in a GIT repository, and jobs / services / tests are deployed as self contained units - ie, all dependent macros are 'compiled' into a single program, without any need for SASAUTOS or Catalogs or suchlike.

More info here: https://sasjs.io/resources/#other-useful-websites