topic Using macro as part of variable name in SAS Programming

Using macro as part of variable name

splt — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 08:17:04 GMT

I have code like this:

%let year=2019;
proc sql;
    select price as price_&year
    from my_data;
quit;

With this the name of variable is price_2019 like I wanted. However, is there a way to use that specific macro variable same way to get other years too? I tried to use price_&year-1 but it didn't work. It feels stupid to make own macro for every year.

Re: Using macro as part of variable name

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 08:27:11 GMT

Since the macro language has only datatype text (which means that "2019 - 1" is not a formula, but just a string of characters), you need to force it to perform calculations by using %EVAL:

price_%eval(&year - 1)

Example:

%let year = 2019;

data test;
price_&year = 1;
price_%eval(&year - 1)  = 2;
run;

proc print data=test noobs;
run;

Result:

price_2019	price_2018
1	2