topic Re: Macro to Combine Files in SAS Programming

Macro to Combine Files

BTAinRVA — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 15:26:35 GMT

Please excuse a newbie question but I've searched far & wide and still haven't figured out how to do this simple thing. I want to create a macro variable for the current year, something like

%Let CurrYr = year(today());

and then use this in a macro to combine SAS files for the last 5 years:

%Macro combine;

%Let FYEAR = &curryr;

%Let PYEAR = %eval(&FYEAR - 1)

Set

%DO i = 1 %TO 5;

aaf.AcademicYear.&PYEAR.&FYEAR;

%Let FYEAR = %eval(&curryr - &i);

%Let PYEAR = %eval(&FYEAR - 1);

%End;

run;

%MEND;

So the first iteration would get the file named AcademicYear20122013 and combine it with files for the previous four years thru AcademicYear20082009.

Thanks for any help.

Re: Macro to Combine Files

ballardw — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 15:55:09 GMT

You have 3 issues I see.

First getting a base year. One way similar to your approach is:

%Let CurrYr = %sysfunc(year("&sysdate"d));

If SAS is restarted daily. "Year" is a data step function that requires a date value and today is a datastep function and can't be called directly in macro assignments. Another approach

data _null_;

length yr $ 4 ;

yr = put(year(today()),f4.0);

call symput("CurrYr",yr);

run;

Second, the line

%Let PYEAR = %eval(&FYEAR - 1)

needs a semicolon at the end;

Third, the line

aaf.AcademicYear.&PYEAR.&FYEAR;

should not have a semicolon. This is the actual text generated by the macro. with the semicolon it will generate

set

name1;

name2;

etc.

Also, you may need an "unused" ; after the %do loop to close the SET statement depending on how you are using the combine macro.

Re: Macro to Combine Files

BTAinRVA — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 18:00:33 GMT

BallardW,

Thank you very much for your helpful assistance!