topic Re: Use var from have in do loop in SAS Programming

Use var from have in do loop

capam — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 17:53:01 GMT

I'm attempting to access a variable in have for calling a macro from a do loop. When I try the following code I get errors:

ERROR: The DIM, LBOUND, and HBOUND functions require an array name for the first argument.

ERROR 68-185: The function Var_in_have is unknown, or cannot be accessed.

data have;
	call execute('proc sql;');

	do i=1 to dim(Var_in_have) while (Var_in_have(i) ne .);
		call execute(cats('%nrstr(%some_macro)(',Var_in_have(i),')'));
	end;

	call execute('quit;');
run;

Re: Use var from have in do loop

Reeza — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 18:24:49 GMT

You don't have a SET statement so you aren't using any data.

Build your string outside of CALL EXECUTE and check what it's generating first. Then pass the string to CALL EXECUTE.

In my experience, you don't usually need the %nrstr() when using CALL EXECUTE unless there's something you need to mask.

Re: Use var from have in do loop

Astounding — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 18:45:51 GMT

There are bright red DANGER signs throughout your post that indicate you should not be doing this.

You need to understand SAS language for macro language to be useful. Macro language does not process your data. It builds a program by generating working SAS statements. You are not ready for this yet. Here are just a few examples.

Your message indicates that you think you are using data from the data set HAVE. You're not. There is nothing about your program that reads from an existing SAS data set.

You use the DIM function to refer to an array named Var_in_have. There is no such array. If you did have such an array, it would seem that it should contain names of variables. The reference to "ne ." would be incorrect for referring to a missing value for the name of a variable.

Your intent seems to be to run a macro for every variable. While that's possible, it's extremely unlikely that the same macro would be useful for both character and numeric variables.

You would do better to describe your original data and what you are trying to accomplish. You could get answers here, possibly very simple answers. The answers may or may not include macro language (depending on the goal).

Re: Use var from have in do loop

capam — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 19:58:42 GMT

Hi Astounding,

Thanks for your comments. The problem statement has changed since original posting.

Problem statement: generate series of line plots from 4 variables.

Source: have is 1 table with the 4 variables of interest:

VehNo is integer

FaultNo is integer

stat is float

date is dt format.

Output will be line plots of stat vs date.

Typical loop that calls a line plot macro follows:

for i = 1:dim(VehNo)

for j = 1:dim(FaultNo)

call line_plot_macro(VehNo(i),FaultNo(j))

end j

end i

The macro will access the data. The macro will organize and plot the stats by occurance date from the instances of a specific fault for a specific vehicle.

Initially there should be in the neighborhood of 100 plots which will increase as data is collected.

I can probably get the line plot macro by modifying code generated by the line plot wizard.

I hope this is clearer.

capam

Re: Use var from have in do loop

Astounding — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 20:12:18 GMT

Yes, you will need the code from the wizard, so you can plug it into a program. If you are looking to get a separate plot for each combination of values that VEHNO and FAULTNO take on, it sounds like you need this:

proc sort data=have;

by VehNo FaultNo;

run;

proc plot /* or sgplot or whatever the wizard tells you to use */ data=have;

by VehNo FaultNo;

*** Add the rest of the code from the wizard;

run;

Re: Use var from have in do loop

ballardw — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 22:50:44 GMT

You may want to look into a completely different approach the Graph Templat Language let's you do some pretty interesting things and I think it is much more straight forward then what it looks like you are attempting

http://support.sas.com/kb/41/367.html

http://support.sas.com/kb/39/099.html

http://support.sas.com/kb/39/092.html

All show different groupings of series charts. Go the Results tabl on the page to see the graph, the Full code will have code to generate the graph.