Quote the quotes

Patrick — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 06:10:49 GMT

Hi guys

I'm trying to implement a SAS macro which generates a data step attrib statement. The problem comes from a real life scenario where I want to automate table creation based on SAS DI Studio 4.9 generated code.

The "%let have" statement is a representation of the auto-generated code bit so this statement is a given and can't be modified.

The %let statement will be auto-generated and no modification is possible.

%let have = %nrquote(Peter & Paul%'s label);

I can implement whatever macro code I want. Below does not work 😞 so the code posted is where I am right now and got stuck.

%macro codegen;

%let label=%sysfunc(transtrn(&have,%nrquote(%'),%nrquote(%'%')));

data want;

attrib var length=8 label=%nrquote(%')%str(&label)%nrquote(%');

stop;

run;

%mend;

%codegen;

And here what I would like the macro to return. This code works if executed on its own.

data want;

attrib var length=8 label='Peter & Paul''s label';

stop;

run;

My environment is SAS9.4 M2 under RHEL

Thanks

Patrick

Re: Quote the quotes

Patrick — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 12:54:06 GMT

O.K. - this was now ridiculously hard to work out. But at least I believe I've got it now. I normally don't mark my own answer as "correct" but this time I feel I deserve a treat.

%let have = %nrquote(Peter & Paul%'s label);

%macro codegen;

%let label=%str(%')%qsysfunc(transtrn(&have,%str(%'),%str(%'%')))%str(%');

data want;

attrib var length=8 label=%unquote(&label);

stop;

run;

%mend;

%codegen;

Result:

MPRINT(CODEGEN): data want;

MPRINT(CODEGEN): attrib var length=8 label='Peter & Paul''s label';

MPRINT(CODEGEN): stop;

MPRINT(CODEGEN): run;

topic Re: Quote the quotes in SAS Programming

Quote the quotes

Re: Quote the quotes