topic Re: Macro error in SAS Procedures

Macro error

robertrao — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 00:52:03 GMT

Hi,

When I run this code I get an error

Apparent symbolic reference DSET not resolved

Could you help me overcome this??

options symbolgen mlogic;

Re: Macro error

Tom — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 01:07:24 GMT

You cannot refer to the value of local macro variables (all macro parameters are local to the macro) outside of the macro. So you cannot refer to them in the call to the macro.

You would be better off just copying the text twice or using another line of code in the calling program to create a macro variable.

%let name=vent7w2011May ;

%ventilator(dset=&name, itb_extb=intext.combined&name);

Re: Macro error

robertrao — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 01:39:04 GMT

Hi Tom,

Could you clarify this a little bit for me...

the dset changes for every call of the macro so I cannot put it in the %let as well??????

Re: Macro error

Ron_MacroMaven — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:48:19 GMT

Do you have a list of data sets to process?

http://www.sascommunity.org/wiki/Making_Lists

Re: Macro error

robertrao — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:55:43 GMT

Hi Thanks for the reply I think I got it..

But could you tell me how can I use Set statement to acheive this same thing??

This is inside of a macro and each time you call a macro the results I get I want to append to the previous

Thanks

proc append base=intext.final_all data=intext.&itb_extb;

run;

Re: Macro error

Tom — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:00:41 GMT

proc append base=intext.final_all data=intext.&itb_extb;

run;

Says to append the records from intext.&itb_extb to the end of intext.final_all.

You can do the same with a data step like:

data intext.&itb_extb ;

set intext.&itb_extb intext.final_all ;

run;

Re: Macro error

robertrao — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:21:26 GMT

i have a little confusion here

would it not be :

data intext.final_all ;

set intext.final_all intext.&itb_extb ;

run;

Re: Macro error

robertrao — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:45:34 GMT

Does it matter at all?either way works??

Thanks

Re: Macro error

Tom — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:54:16 GMT

Doesn't really matter. The only difference would be order of the records in the table.

The disadvantage of using this method is that as the FINAL_ALL table grows this step will get slower and slower as it has to keep copy over all of the previous records. The discussion before about placing the names into a macro variable or list of macro variables and then looping over the macro variables to generate a single SET statement that listed all of the datasets would execute faster. But it depends on the size of the tables whether the difference is significant for your application.

Re: Macro error

robertrao — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:05:49 GMT

But Tom

in the example below

for the first call this is OK

In the second call intext.&itb_extb changes and intext.final_all has nothing prior

So we will be having the contents of only the dataset in the second call???

Please correct me

In the end we will have only the records from the last dataset???

data intext.&itb_extb ;

set intext.&itb_extb intext.final_all ;

run;

Re: Macro error

Tom — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:12:21 GMT

You are right. I reversed the BASE and DATA table names. The order in the SET statement doesn't matter very much, but which one is specified in the DATA statement is critical.

Re: Macro error

robertrao — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:14:35 GMT

Thanks Tom for the clarification..

Regards

Re: Macro error

robertrao — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:23:11 GMT

So, Instead of

data intext.final_all ;

set intext.final_all intext.&itb_extb;

run;

YOU PUT

data intext.&itb_extb ;

set intext.&itb_extb intext.final_all ;

run;

In both of these the first one is to be followed right???

Re: Macro error

robertrao — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:29:34 GMT

Hi,

I tried to use it and either of the cases it says:

intext.final_all ; doesnot exist??????

Please let me know how to deal with this???

Thanks

Re: Macro error

Tom — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 22:15:27 GMT

In any of these accumulation type programs you need to "prime the pump" in some way. That is one of the advantages of using PROC APPEND as it is happy to handle the case when the BASE dataset does not already exist.

One way to deal with it is to add some logic to your macro. Such as by making the inclusion of the final dataset conditional on it already existing as in the code fragment below.

data intext.final_all ;

set

%if exist(intext.final_all) %then intext.final_all ;

intext.&itb_extb ;

run;

Re: Macro error

robertrao — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:48:42 GMT

Hi Tom,

I understansd that the below code sets

intext.final_all and intext.&itb_extb ;

could you explain the meaning of :

%if exist(intext.final_all) %then intext.final_all ;

Thanks

data intext.final_all ;

set

%if exist(intext.final_all) %then intext.final_all ;

intext.&itb_extb ;

run;

Re: Macro error

Tom — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:19:33 GMT

First there is a mistake in the code. For it to work right as macro logic I needed to wrap the EXIST() function call in a %SYSFUNC() macro function call.

%if %sysfunc(exist(intext.final_all)) %then intext.final_all ;

What that statement means is that when the dataset INTEXT.FINAL_ALL exists the macro should generate the SAS code INTEXT.FINAL_ALL. Since there is no %ELSE clause when the dataset does not exist then it generates no SAS code at all. So the effect is that when the dataset exists both datasets are referenced in the SET statement and when it does not only the new data is referenced.