topic Re: Macro help please in SAS Enterprise Guide

Macro help please

woo — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 19:59:30 GMT

I am running below code and getting error -

date value for "test_check" dataset is Mon, Feb 23, 2015.

output - would be - number of datasets (ana&i.) where date value is not today()-2

options symbolgen merror serror spool;

%macro test;

%do i=1 %to 10;

libname rep&i. "f:\woo\dir&i.\test_datasets";

data ana&i.;

set rep&i..test_check;

%if "date"d ne %sysfunc(today()worddate.)-2 %then %do;

output ana&i.;

%end;

run;

%end;

%mend;

%test;

ERROR: Expected close parenthesis after macro function invocation not found.

ERROR: Required operator not found in expression: "date"d ne

%sysfunc(today()worddate.)-2

ERROR: The macro CHECK will stop executing.

Re: Macro help please

PaigeMiller — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 20:09:03 GMT

There are lots of problems here.

What is the format of "date" ? Is it a true SAS date value or a character string or something else?

What is %check ?

You don't need %sysfunc anyway, you could just use today() without any macro functions.

Re: Macro help please

woo — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 20:44:44 GMT

What is the format of "date" ? Is it a true SAS date value or a character string or something else? date=Mon, Feb 23, 2015

What is %check ? - by mistake matched with another macro - deleted

You don't need %sysfunc anyway, you could just use today() without any macro functions.

Re: Macro help please

PaigeMiller — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 20:52:12 GMT

So Date is a character string, is that what you are saying?

And it uses month abreviations (Feb instead of February)?

And it uses day abbreviations (Mon instead of Monday) followed by a comma and a space?

(Or is date a SAS data value formatted as a character string?)

Re: Macro help please

woo — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 21:04:41 GMT

So Date is a character string, is that what you are saying? - date variable is "date type data of-course

And it uses month abreviations (Feb instead of February)? date value is = Mon, Feb 23, 2015 (i think we can use weekdate17.)

And it uses day abbreviations (Mon instead of Monday) followed by a comma and a space?

(Or is date a SAS data value formatted as a character string?)

Re: Macro help please

PaigeMiller — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 21:10:35 GMT

Okay, you use weekdate17.

Then your original problem is solved like this

%macro test;

%do i=1 %to 10;

libname rep&i. "f:\woo\dir&i.\test_datasets";

data ana&i.;

set rep&i..test_check;

if date ne (today()-2) then output;

run;

%end;

%mend;

%test

Re: Macro help please

woo — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 21:19:00 GMT

i tried this but i am getting all 10 sas datasets (ana1 to ana10) where some datasets doens't has any value for variable "date" and some datasets (2 actually) where has value for "date" variable which is satisfying "IF" condition.

Isn't it we supposed to get only those 2 datasets where date value is not matching.

if date ne (today()-2) then output ana&i.;

Re: Macro help please

Reeza — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 21:58:50 GMT

Your macro checks against the variable values "DATE" in a dataset. If no values are present the dataset is created, but is empty.

You need to add a step to not create the data step or delete it if the number of observations are 0.

This would go something like (pseudo code):

Check for values of date in dataset using proc sql
if count of obs>0 then proceed with data step as above code. (macro logic, i.e. %if)
no else required
end loop

Re: Macro help please

woo — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 23:54:48 GMT

i tried with this code but it is giving syntax error////

%macro test;

%do i=1 %to 10;

libname rep&i. "f:\woo\dir&i.\test_datasets";

data ana&i.;

set rep&i..test_check;

if date ne (today()-2) and if _n_>0 then output;

run;

%end;

%mend;

%test

Re: Macro help please

art297 — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 00:03:31 GMT

One definite syntax error will come from:

if date ne (today()-2) and if _n_>0 then output;

if date ne (today()-2) and _n_>0 then output;

will work better

Re: Macro help please

woo — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 00:17:41 GMT

in this case,

if date ne (today()-2) and _n_>0 then output;

it is giving me all 10 datasets with zero obs.

Actually i want output only if date value (which is Wed,Feb25,2015) is less than 2 days back

Thank you

Re: Macro help please

SASKiwi — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 00:30:07 GMT

If I understand you correctly would this do what you want - only dates more recent than 2 days ago will be output.

if date > (today()-2) and _n_>0 then output;

Re: Macro help please

Quentin — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 00:33:49 GMT

Actually, what is the point of the _n_ > 0 part?

_n_ is an counter for how many times the data step loop has iterated. In your example, it will always be > 0.

If you are trying to implement Reeza's suggestion, that won't do it. You would need an %IF statement (as he mentioned), to test whether or not there are 0 records that meet your criterion, and then only generate the data step code if there are > 0 records.

Re: Macro help please

art297 — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 00:40:31 GMT

I, too, don't understand why you are using _n_.

Do you really want (?):

if date ge (today()-2) then output;

Re: Macro help please

woo — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 00:44:25 GMT

First of all appreciate your time to help me.

Actually it is still giving me all 10 datasets from 10 directories with zero observation on it.

Let me conform i have "test_check" dataset in 10 different directory with one variable "date" which has value "Wed, Feb25, 2015". For now i have same value for all datasets so basically output of above code logic would be nothing- none dataset should be created since "if" condition is not satisfying.

is this help?

Re: Macro help please

SASKiwi — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 01:08:54 GMT

Yes, if you only have one date in your data "Wed, Feb25, 2015" and you run your SAS program on 28 Feb then that is 3 days ago and you will get no data. I assume your real data will have varying dates otherwise there is no point trying to select on date as you would always get all observations or no observations - unless that is what you want.

Re: Macro help please

art297 — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 01:29:08 GMT

I'm confused! You said that "

So Date is a character string, is that what you are saying? - date variable is date type data of-course"

in SAS it can only be character or numeric. Which is it?

Re: Macro help please

Quentin — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 02:01:04 GMT

To avoid generating all 10 datasets, you need to use a macro %IF to control generation of the each data set, depending on whether or not there are any records.

Jack Hamilton wrote a really nice paper on function-style macros that count the number of a records in a dataset. http://www2.sas.com/proceedings/sugi26/p095-26.pdf.

You can use his %MTANYOBS macro in your setting, like:

%macro test(nData);
  %local i;
  %do i=1 %to &nData;
    %if %mtanyobs(data=rep&i.(where=(date ne (today()-2)))) %then %do;
      data ana&i ;
        set rep&i ;
        if date ne (today()-2) then output ;
      run;
    %end;
  %end;
%mend;

data rep1;
  date=today();output;
  date=today()-1;output;
run;
data rep2;
  date=today()-2;output;
  date=today()-2;output;
run;
data rep3;
  date=today()-2;output;
  date=today()+1;output;
run;
 
%test(nData=3)

So that macro call will generate ana1 (with 2 obs) and ana3 (with 1 obs), but it will NOT generate ana2 (with 0 obs), because rep2 had 0 records that satisfied the where= option.

Hope that helps,

--Q.

Re: Macro help please

woo — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 07:52:46 GMT

@Arthur - its "date" type with weekdate17. format

@SASKIWI - I am running code today, 27th Feb and value for "date" variable in dataset is "Wed, Feb25, 2015" so only 2 days back and not 3 days ago.

Re: Macro help please

art297 — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 14:57:39 GMT

Can you zip and post one of your files. That would definitely make is easier for folks here to figure out what the problem is.