topic Re: TURN MACROVARIABLE FROM MISSING TO 0? in SAS Programming

TURN MACROVARIABLE FROM MISSING TO 0?

SimoneStefano96 — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 19:35:33 GMT

Hello,

how can I turn a macrovariable currently having missing value to being zero?

Thanks,

Your sincerely,

Simone

Tom — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 20:10:51 GMT

If you want to change the value use a %LET statement.

If you want to change it conditionally then use a %IF/%THEN/%DO block.

Macro variables do not have a concept of missing. They are just text strings.

If by missing you mean not defined then use:

%if not %symexist(mvar) %then %do;
  %let mvar=0;
%end;

If by missing you mean totally empty then use:

%if 0=%length(&mvar) %then %do;
  %let mvar=0;
%end;

But you might want to instead update the code that is creating the macro variable to create it with zero for missing.

So if you created macro variable MVAR from actual variable VAR then perhaps update the code to be more like this:

call symputx('mvar',coallesce(var,0));

SimoneStefano96 — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 20:12:06 GMT

Hello @Tom ,

thanks for your answer. The %IF/%THEN/%DO block was just what I was looking for.

Have a nice day,

Simone