topic %Sysfunc function in SAS Programming

%Sysfunc function

Tap222 — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 06:19:05 GMT

%sysfunc - why this function we use?

Re: function

Reeza — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 06:17:57 GMT

Documentation:

Execute SAS functions or user-written functions.

Logic:

How does SAS macro processing know if text you type is a string or a function? Wrapping it with SYSFUNC tells the processor that you want to evaluate that function, not treat it as a string.

%let my_func = substr(Awesome, 1, 2);
%let my_func_executed = %sysfunc(substr(Awesome, 1, 3));

%put &my_func;
%put &my_func_executed;

Results:

54 %let my_func = substr(Awesome, 1, 2);

55 %let my_func_executed = %sysfunc(substr(Awesome, 1, 3));

57 %put &my_func;

substr(Awesome, 1, 2)

58 %put &my_func_executed;

Awe

Re: %Sysfunc function

Astounding — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 14:14:29 GMT

Macro language contains just a handful of functions. DATA steps, on the other hand, contain hundreds of functions. %SYSFUNC was invented so that you could tell macro language to use a DATA step function. That way, the macro language would not have to reprogram all those DATA step functions into a macro language version. Most DATA step functions (not all) can be called using %SYSFUNC.