topic Re: Variable in PROC EXPORT outfile in SAS Procedures

Variable in PROC EXPORT outfile

ins_dev — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 12:02:31 GMT

Hello everyone,

I am pretty new to sas programming and I am kind of stuck trying to move two variables as outfile-directory.

What I'm trying to do is filling up the filename of my exported text file with the last month and the current year.

So if someone runs the sas programme today the filename would be "filename-10-2014.txt"

I already have a code snippet which does work. But what it does, is inserting the whole current date into the filename:

%let Datum = &SYSDATE9;

export data=SASUSER.GEBDATUM

outfile= "X:\filename-&Datum..txt"

dbms=tab

replace;

Delimiter=';';

putnames=no;

;

Now I am trying to format the Date by splitting it up to a month and a year variable. Here is the complete code:

data datum;

Datum = &SYSDATE9;

Monat = MONTH(Datum);

Premonat =;

If Monat = '1' then Premonat = '12'; else Premonat = (Monat-1);

Jahr = YEAR(Datum);

%let mmyyyy = cat(-,Premonat,Jahr);

run;

export data=SASUSER.GEBDATUM

outfile= "X:\filename-&monat&mmyyyy..txt"

dbms=tab

replace;

Delimiter=';';

putnames=no;

run;

Here is the important part of the log:

NOTE: 9405 records were written to the file 'X:\filename-cat(-,Premonat,Jahr).txt'

So it does know that &mmyyyy is a variable within the code, but it does not transport the logic nor the value behind it.

What am I doing wrong here? What can I do to transport the values from the data step to my export procedure?

In the data step output my values are correct (Datum: 20047, Monat: 11, Premonat: 10, Jahr: 2014;)

Many thanks in advance.

Re: Variable in PROC EXPORT outfile

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 12:19:01 GMT

You are using the macro statement %let erroneously in the data step. Macro directives (%... statements and &.... variables) are executed by the macro processor BEFORE the data step is compiled and executed.

So you get a macro variable mmyyyy with the value cat(-,Premonat,Jahr)

Use call symput instead to export values from a data step into a macro variable.

Re: Variable in PROC EXPORT outfile

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 12:23:43 GMT

I like to handle such problems with a data _null_ step:

data _null_;

datum = intnx('month',date(),-1);

call symput('mmyyyy',put(month(datum),z2.)!!put(year(datum),z4.));

run;

Re: Variable in PROC EXPORT outfile

ins_dev — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 12:38:43 GMT

Your solution worked perfectly out.

Vielen Dank!