topic Re: how do i mask a statement in SAS Programming

how do i mask a statement

vraj1 — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 10:50:18 GMT

I have a footnote "%s: percentage of successful attempts".

if i use %nrstr(&footnote.) where footnote sontains "%nrstr(&footnote.)"

i get the following warning.

WARNING: Apparent invocation of macro S not resolved.

How can i mask this

Re: how do i mask a statement

Reeza — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 11:55:14 GMT

Use single quotes instead of double is a quick way.

In single quotes SAS won't try and resolve the macro, in double quotes it would. If you also needed to include a macro variable in your footnote this wouldn't work.

Re: how do i mask a statement

vraj1 — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 11:26:21 GMT

It was not in quotes for example:

%put footnote = <%nrstr(&footnote.)>;

Re: how do i mask a statement

RW9 — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 12:03:39 GMT

So, can you provide some example of what it is your doing. Why have the footnote in a macro variable, normally there would be lots of footnotes, so easier to store them in a dataset, then call it from there:

data _null_;
  set footnotes;
  call execute(cat('footnote',strip(put(_n_,best.)),' j=l "',strip(footnote),'";'));
run;

Re: how do i mask a statement

vraj1 — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 12:16:07 GMT

I have a dataset which has all footnotes for each table and importing the dataset for each particular program and calling them

call symput('footnote',%nrbquote(strip(footnote))); in the datastep then i am using %put footnote = <%nrbquote(&footnote.)>;

Re: how do i mask a statement

RW9 — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 12:29:34 GMT

Yes, so you could try the datastep I provided above, to simply generate the statements from the datastep - avoid all the macro variables and other processing.

Re: how do i mask a statement

Tom — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 12:49:59 GMT

Can you post actual SAs code that replicates the error message? It is unclear if you are talking about the FOOTNOTE statement or the creation of a macro variable named FOOTNOTE or expanding the reference to a macro varaible named FOOTNOTE.