topic Re: Extracting item from macro variable in SAS Programming

Extracting item from macro variable

everyone — Mon, 08 May 2023 22:32:41 GMT

I'm wondering how I can extract an item from a list contained in a macro variable. I know I can do something like this using arrays inside of a data step, but am seeking a way to do this outside of a data step.

I've included a simplified example, in which I create a macro variable containing a list and want to extract the 2nd item.

%let list = dog cat mouse;
%put &list$2; /*want this to return cat/*

Re: Extracting item from macro variable

PaigeMiller — Mon, 08 May 2023 22:43:13 GMT

%put &list$2;

is not really the syntax you want. It writes to the log a string which is your variable &list with $2 appended.

To extract words from a string, you want to use the %scan macro function.

%put %scan(&list,2);

Re: Extracting item from macro variable

Tom — Tue, 09 May 2023 14:45:17 GMT

What do you consider the second "item"?

A macro variable is just a string of characters.

If you want to treat the macro variable as a space delimited list of values then you can use the %SCAN() function

%let second=%scan(&list,2,%str( ));

Or if you use the macro variable value to generate actual SAS code you can then use the SCAN() function.

second = scan("&list",2,' ');