topic Re: GETOPTIONS Question in SAS Programming

GETOPTIONS Question

PaigeMiller — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 13:38:55 GMT

I have a long list of colors, set in GOPTIONS

goptions colors=(black red green blue cyan magenta orange lightblue limegreen purple brown yellow salmon

darkgreen pink turquoise tan olive firebrick slateblue orangered yellowgreen teal gray44 blueviolet

crimson chocolate darkmagenta gold silver peru plum powderblue tomato olivedrab lavender khaki darkgray

cornsilk deepskyblue deeppink goldenrod);

Then I try to obtain this same list of colors in a macro variable for use in the program:

%let colors=%sysfunc(getoption(colors));

and the resulting macro variable is

( BLACK RED GREEN BLUE CYAN MAGENTA ORANGE LIGHTBLU LIMEGREE PURPLE BROWN YELLOW SALMON DARKGREE PINK TURQUOIS TAN OLIVE

FIREBRIC SLATEBLU ORANGERE YELLOWGR TEAL GRAY44 BLUEVIOL CRIMSON CHOCOLAT DARKMAGE GOLD SILVER PERU PLUM POWDERBL TOMATO

OLIVEDRA LAVEN

I understand why the color names are maximum eight characters, that's fine, not a problem. I do not understand why the macro variable ends with laven (lavender) and doesn't include the remaining colors.

What is the problem here? How do I fix this?

Re: GETOPTIONS Question

RW9 — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 13:45:58 GMT

I would say you've hit a maximum length for macro variables there $2000. Have a look in SASHELP.VGOPT dataset, you can find COLORS option there, I would expect more than one, try processing from that rather than assign to macro var.

Re: GETOPTIONS Question

chrisj75 — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 13:49:36 GMT

The maximum number of characters which can be stored in a macro variable is 32767, not 2000. The limit must be down to the getoption() function.

Re: GETOPTIONS Question

PaigeMiller — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 13:54:04 GMT

Maybe it is a limit with GETOPTION, seems like the limit might be 256 characters

Nevertheless, I can get the information out of the SASHELP.VGOPT table

Re: GETOPTIONS Question

Astounding — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 14:10:58 GMT

A related limit ... but not the one you are running into ... within SASHELP.VGOPT, the variable SETTING which holds the colors list is limited to 1024 characters.

Re: GETOPTIONS Question

data_null__ — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 14:25:22 GMT

VGOPT SETTINGS contains something even more bizarre when I ran it.

( BLACK RED GREEN BLUE CYAN MAGENTA ORANGE LIGHTBLU E LIMEGREE N PURPLE BROWN YELLOW SALMON DARKGREE N PINK TURQUOIS E TAN OLIVE FIREBRIC K SLATEBLU E ORANGERE D )

Re: GETOPTIONS Question

PaigeMiller — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 14:31:18 GMT

I'm not seeing that particular issue, data_null_;

Re: GETOPTIONS Question

data_null__ — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 14:39:19 GMT

I can only see the "correct" (truncated to 8 byte words) list with PROC GOPTIONS.

19         proc goptions option=colors;
20            run;

                                             SAS/GRAPH software options and parameters
                                            (executing in IOM ROOT COMP ENV environment)

COLORS=( BLACK RED GREEN BLUE CYAN MAGENTA ORANGE LIGHTBLU LIMEGREE PURPLE BROWN YELLOW SALMON DARKGREE PINK TURQUOIS TAN OLIVE 
FIREBRIC SLATEBLU ORANGERE YELLOWGR TEAL GRAY44 BLUEVIOL CRIMSON CHOCOLAT DARKMAGE GOLD SILVER PERU PLUM POWDERBL TOMATO OLIVEDRA 
LAVENDER KHAKI DARKGRAY CORNSILK DEEPSKYB DEEPPINK GOLDENRO ) 
                             Default color list

Re: GETOPTIONS Question

Andre — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 14:52:27 GMT

Yes i see too it like so

searching color name i have found that in the register you have colors in short for the html colors

but only for G O P green orange and purple

!!!!!!

Re: GETOPTIONS Question

Haikuo — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 14:57:12 GMT

FYI, at least since SAS 9.2, the max length of a macro variable was bumped up to 65,534

Haikuo

Re: GETOPTIONS Question

PaigeMiller — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 15:01:46 GMT

Andre and data_null_; what version of SAS, what operating system? I am not seeing this with SAS 9.4, Windows 7 PRO 64bit

Re: GETOPTIONS Question

data_null__ — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 15:30:16 GMT

I am running 9.3 (TS1M2) on SunOS 5.10 (SUN 64).

Re: GETOPTIONS Question

PaigeMiller — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 15:40:56 GMT

Paige is wondering if you should report this as a bug, and see what SAS has to say ... it sure seems like a bug to me ... of course, if this is not something you would ever need in your work then you may not want to bother

Re: GETOPTIONS Question

Tom — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 16:09:10 GMT

You seem to have hit the limit on the COLORS option. What use do you have for so many colors? I doubt that any graph produced with so many colors would be readable by humans.

Re: GETOPTIONS Question

PaigeMiller — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 16:21:39 GMT

No, I haven't hit the limit on the COLORS option, but I appear to have hit the limit on the GETOPTION command

I agree that humans have trouble distinguishing all those different colors, but tell that to the managers who want this ... what started out as a graph with 5 colors for five different pieces of equipment turns into ... "can't you do the same thing for a situation where we have 32 different operators?" ... and my version of SAS PROC ARGUEWITHMANAGERS doesn't work

Re: GETOPTIONS Question

Tom — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 16:51:01 GMT

Sounds like you will need to make a coding change if it is important to have access to the list of colors.

Put it into a macro variable before setting the option. Then you can just reference the macro variable.

%let colors=red blue green;

options colors=(&colors);

Re: GETOPTIONS Question

PaigeMiller — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 16:55:39 GMT

Oh no that doesn't work

I have lots of programs that call lots of utility macros that do graphs and stuff.

The utility macros have to be able to access the specific colors chosen by the calling program. Accessing the SASHELP.VGOPT seems to work for me. GETOPTION does not.

Re: GETOPTIONS Question

Tom — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 21:20:14 GMT

Watch out if the length gets longer than 1024. If you are using SAS 9.4 then there will be multiple records in SASHELP.VGOPT. It is tricky to get them concatenated correctly into a macro variable because of how SAS treats trailing blanks. In earlier versions of SAS you are limited to 1024 characters. Even 9.4 has problems, the OFFSET variable is missing for all rows.

Here is a little program to test putting over 1500 characters into the COLORS option and seeing if they call can be retrieved.

%let str=%sysfunc(repeat(red.blue.green.,100));

%let str=%sysfunc(translate(&str,%str( ),.));

goptions colors=(&str);

data _null_;

length value $32767;

do i=1 by 1024 until (last.optname);

set sashelp.vgopt end=eof;

where optname='COLORS';

by optname ;

substr(value,i)=setting;

end;

call symputx(optname,value);

run;

%put Expected length = %length(( &str ));

%put Actual length = %length(%superq(colors));

Re: GETOPTIONS Question

Andre — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 07:41:13 GMT

Paige

My version is sas 9.3.2 Windows 7 32 bits

Andre