topic Re: Data step: value with ampersand inside in SAS Programming

Data step: value with ampersand inside

garag — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 11:07:19 GMT

Hi,

I have the followng code:

%let mycompany=M&G CORPORATION;

data Portfolio_holding_lt_30;

length MYCOMPANY $ 100
;

MYCOMPANY = "&mycompany.";

run;

%put &syserr;

I get a warning and the syserr is equals to 4. I don't like this because I check if syserr > 0 then If yes I stop the execution.

To there is a workaround to the instruction

MYCOMPANY = "&mycompany.";

in order to avoid to get syserr = 0

Many thanks.

regards

suraestar — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 11:12:35 GMT

Hi Garag,

Yes, this would lead to apparent symbolc warning since SAS consider G (ie.,M&G Company) as macro variable in the session.

So in order to avoid this, You should use Macro Masking function such as %str(), %nrstr(),%quote()........etc.

Try the below code.

%let mycompany=%nrstr(M&G CORPORATION);

data Portfolio_holding_lt_30;
length MYCOMPANY $ 100 ;
MYCOMPANY = "&mycompany.";
run;

Thanks.

Astounding — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 14:46:25 GMT

There's another way that might be appropriate:

%let mycompany = 'M&G CORPORATION';

Then later:

MYCOMPANY = &MYCOMPANY;

As long as all uses of the macro variable require quotes around the company name, this would work.

Good luck.