topic Using macro with text files in SAS Programming

Using macro with text files

mbas — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 15:42:01 GMT

Hi!

I have the files 123.txt, 456.txt and 789.txt and a program like this:

*******************************************************

...

%let n= 123.txt;

...

*******************************************************

And I need to replace with 456.txt and 789.txt, and run again.

I'm trying this:

*****************************************************

%macro mb(stg);

...

%let n= &stg..txt;

...

%mend;

%let gball="123 456 789";

%do %while (&k<=3);

%let gb=scan(&gball,&k);

%mb(&gb);

%let k=k+1;

%end;

*****************************************************

You can note that I'm not very expert with macro, so any comment is very usefull.

Thanks for yours answers!!

Re: Using macro with text files

PaigeMiller — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 15:45:56 GMT

Your %do loop cannot be in open code, it can only work inside a macro.

You haven't stated exactly what the problem is with this code, so ... what is the problem?

Re: Using macro with text files

Reeza — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 15:48:45 GMT

What exactly is your question? It's not clear what you need help with here.

Example 1, 3, 4 may be helpful to you here:

https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/SAS-9-4-Macro-Language-Reference-Has-a-New-Appendix/ta-p/291716

If you're importing multiple text files that are all the same, see this post as well:

https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/How-do-I-write-a-macro-to-import-multiple-text-files-that-have/ta-p/223627

Last but not least, look at CALL EXECUTE for a simple way to call a macro multiple times.

I usually use a pipe to get the list of files into a data set, then use CALL EXECUTE to call the macro once for each file.

@mbas wrote:

Hi!

I have the files 123.txt, 456.txt and 789.txt and a program like this:

*******************************************************

...

%let n= 123.txt;

...

*******************************************************

And I need to replace with 456.txt and 789.txt, and run again.

I'm trying this:

*****************************************************

%macro mb(stg);

...

%let n= &stg..txt;

...

%mend;

%let gball="123 456 789";

%do %while (&k<=3);

%let gb=scan(&gball,&k);

%mb(&gb);

%let k=k+1;

%end;

*****************************************************

You can note that I'm not very expert with macro, so any comment is very usefull.

Thanks for yours answers!!

Re: Using macro with text files

Reeza — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 15:49:32 GMT

And assuming you are trying to write a macro, first get your base case working, that is, what does the code look like for a single file. Once you have that working it's relatively trivial to convert it to a macro.

Re: Using macro with text files

Astounding — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 16:02:59 GMT

Besides needing a macro to use %DO, you also need to get rid of the quotes, and you need to use the macro function (%scan) instead of the DATA step function (scan). Macro language does not use quotes to identify strings of characters. In combination, the new macro might look like this:

%macro loop (gball=);

%local k;

%do k=1 %to %sysfunc(countw(&gball));

%mb (%scan(&gball, &k))

%end;

%mend loop;

Then call it with (for example):

%loop (gball=123 456 789)