topic Re: executing macro inside a data step in SAS Programming

executing macro inside a data step

sfffdg — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 04:42:26 GMT

Hi,

I am executing a macro inside a data step and passing the data step variable to the macro.

But only last record variable is passed all the time (like my loop executed 2 times and 2 times last record variable only passed as a parameter).

The output should be

APPDIRECT_PROD_2018011001.dat|20180110|20180110|0000000001|APPDIRECT_PROD_2018011002.|ctl

APPDIRECT_PROD_2018011002.dat|20180110|20180110|0000000002|APPDIRECT_PROD_2018011002.|ctl

But I am getting

APPDIRECT_PROD_2018011002.dat|20180110|20180110|0000000002|APPDIRECT_PROD_2018011002.|ctl

Where exactly the issue?

Thanks,

Swathi

Re: executing macro inside a data step

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 06:54:08 GMT

You are repeatedly creating macro variable new with call symput.

You are pushing macro calls onto the execution stack that contain the macro variable name, not it's value.

Since the macros won't execute before the data step has finished, all macro calls will use the last value put into macro variable new.

Instead of setting macro variables, use data step values in the call execute.

Re: executing macro inside a data step

sfffdg — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 07:05:12 GMT

Thank you Sir,for your reply.

I changed the code to the variable directly,instead of the macro variable as i don't want to hardcode the valueas below.

x = cats( '%nrstr(%b(id))' ) ;

then the output is as below.

1 + %b(id)
id
2 + %b(id)
id

instead of the resolved variable value.

Is there any approach to achieve this?

Thanks!!

Re: executing macro inside a data step

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 07:54:31 GMT

Don't hand the name of a data step variable to call execute, but it's values:

x = cats('%nrstr(%b('!!trim(id)!!'))');

Re: executing macro inside a data step

sfffdg — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 20:36:54 GMT

Thank you sir!!

Re: executing macro inside a data step

Tom — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 03:09:33 GMT

So let's eliminate the complexity of your data step from this problem and concentrate on just the CALL EXECUTE issue.

So first create your dataset and then use a DATA _NULL_ step to generate the macro calls.

%macro a ;
data FILELIST ;
  ....
  output;
  ....
run;

data _null_;
  set FILELIST;
  call execute(cats('%nrstr(%b)(',id,')'));
run;
%mend a;

Now you can also probably make your data step much simpler (why are you calling CATT() function on string literals?), but perhaps you can leave that for another question.