topic Re: Use environment string as variable name in SAS Programming

Use environment string as variable name

gsnidow — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 21:04:57 GMT

Greetings all. I'm wanting to use SAS to call a VBScript file in a user's temp directory. After some googling, I found what I think should work, but I keep getting errors. In the below code, I am using %sysget(temp) to get the path, but then I want to append it with '\filename.vbs', but I am getting a 'not resolved error. Could anyone explain why? Thank you.

%let temp_path = %sysget(temp) ;

data _null_ ;

%put &temp_path ;

call symput('file_name',cat("'",&tpath,"\file_name.vbs","'")) ;

%put &file_name ;

run ; quit ;

Greg

Re: Use environment string as variable name

ballardw — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 21:15:19 GMT

Move the %put statement OUT of the data step. The macro variable is not actually available until the datastep completes.

Generally you can't reference created macro variables in a datastep that creates them.

Re: Use environment string as variable name

gsnidow — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 11:28:30 GMT

Thank you ballardw. I had the %put in there just so I could verify that the temp_file variable was being correctly assigned. It seems the real issue is when I try to use it in the symput routine. If I move the symput into it's own data step, that's where I get the issue...

* no problems here, temp_path assigned as expected ;

%let temp_path = %sysget(temp) ;

data _null_ ;

%put &temp_path ;

run ; quit ;

* now, when I try to use temp_path in a symput routine, I get error ;

data _null_ ;

call symput('file_name',cat(&temp_path,'\vbs_file.vbs')) ;

run ; quit ;

ERROR 388-185: Expecting an arithmetic operator.

ERROR 76-322: Syntax error, statement will be ignored.

What I would like to happen is to end up with a file_name variable eq 'C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp\1\vbs_file.vbs', so that I can then use the file_name variable to write create, write to, then execute like below

data _null_ ;

x &file_name ;

run ; quit ;

Re: Use environment string as variable name

data_null__ — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 12:50:17 GMT

Do you need CALL SYMPUT?

%let temp_path = %sysget(temp);
%let file_name = &temp_path\vbs_file.vbs;

Re: Use environment string as variable name

gsnidow — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 13:52:10 GMT

Thank you so much data_null_;. Once again, I was over complicating it. I put it in the symput because I need it for other stuff, and I figured that since it was already there, why not. Thank you.

Greg