topic Re: macro problem in SAS Programming

macro problem

Tal — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 18:18:59 GMT

if &&&who resolves to 17 then why is William 23 excluded from the output results. Can someone please explain?

options mprint symbolgen;

data kids;

input name $ age;

call symput(name, age);

datalines;

Cora 21

Emma 15

Hannah 17

William 23

;

%let who = Hannah;

proc print data=kids;

title "Kids older than &who";

where age > &&&who;

run;

Re: macro problem

Tom — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 18:22:29 GMT

It is included when I run it. Note: Use call symputX() to avoid the spaces in the macro variable values.

307 proc print data=kids;

SYMBOLGEN: Macro variable WHO resolves to Hannah

308 title "Kids older than &who";

309 where age

SYMBOLGEN: && resolves to &.

SYMBOLGEN: Macro variable WHO resolves to Hannah

SYMBOLGEN: Macro variable HANNAH resolves to 17

309! > &&&who;

310 run;

NOTE: There were 2 observations read from the data set WORK.KIDS.

WHERE age>17;

Re: macro problem

Reeza — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 18:23:08 GMT

Its not from mine. You must have some other mistake in your code.

	Kids older than Hannah	5
	09:20 Monday, November 18, 2013

Obs

name

age

	1	Cora	21
	4	William	23

Re: macro problem

Astounding — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 18:31:14 GMT

I would expect no problems from the code the way you posted it, but there would be a problem if you had a longer name such as Bartholomew. If you can't post the exact code that you ran, it might help to add this statement after the first DATA step: %put _user_;

Good luck.

Re: macro problem

Tal — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 18:53:12 GMT

thanks guys,

i actually had to restart my SAS to get the results you all got.Weird...

Re: macro problem

Tal — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 18:57:14 GMT

but does not the macro processor ignores spaces before the 1st non-blank character and everything after the ";" in the value to be assigned to a macro variable?

Re: macro problem

Tom — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 19:02:26 GMT

Yes, but CALL SYMPUT() does not perform a %LET.

In your particular code

age > &&&who

the leading spaces are not a problem, but in other cases they can be. For example if comparing the value in a quoted string.

"17" = "&&&who"

Then the leading spaces in the value of the macro variable HANNAH would cause that condition to be false as "17" does not equal " 17".

Re: macro problem

Tal — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 19:58:31 GMT

i see. A very good point.

Thanks Tom