https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Programming/Passing-macro-to-variables-to-find-the-length/m-p/28701#M5311 The SQL interface offers you the possibility to create macro variables from a query result. Information on column length is available in DICTIONARY.COLUMNS. You may wish to know whether the table is compressed or not, look in DICTIONARY.TABLES.<BR /> <BR /> /Linus Thu, 07 May 2009 08:40:37 GMT LinusH 2009-05-07T08:40:37Z https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Programming/Passing-macro-to-variables-to-find-the-length/m-p/28700#M5310 Hi<BR /> <BR /> I am having a Dataset in work library and the name of the dataset is trans_mon in this dataset 250-300 character variables are there now i want to find the length of character variables(length of the observartion).How can i do this by passing the macro .As i am having 2-3 datasets like this Thu, 07 May 2009 05:12:57 GMT https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Programming/Passing-macro-to-variables-to-find-the-length/m-p/28700#M5310 R_Win 2009-05-07T05:12:57Z https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Programming/Passing-macro-to-variables-to-find-the-length/m-p/28701#M5311 The SQL interface offers you the possibility to create macro variables from a query result. Information on column length is available in DICTIONARY.COLUMNS. You may wish to know whether the table is compressed or not, look in DICTIONARY.TABLES.<BR /> <BR /> /Linus Thu, 07 May 2009 08:40:37 GMT https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Programming/Passing-macro-to-variables-to-find-the-length/m-p/28701#M5311 LinusH 2009-05-07T08:40:37Z https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Programming/Passing-macro-to-variables-to-find-the-length/m-p/28702#M5312 Try using:<BR /> Proc contents Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:00:06 GMT https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Programming/Passing-macro-to-variables-to-find-the-length/m-p/28702#M5312 deleted_user 2009-06-11T21:00:06Z