Macro not resolved even adding in the SASAUTOS

[RahulG]

I am running on SAS 9.4 environment.

In my macro folder "c:\macro",  I have two files a.sas and b.sas. a.sas contains %a definition and similary b.sas contain %b definition

%a;

filename mac_ref "c:\macro";
options APPEND = SASAUTOS=(,mac_ref);

%b;

%a;

call of %b is successfull and call %a throws error "Apparent symbol not resolved".

Problem that I am facing is  If I call any macro before Options append then it do not resolve at all in the session, even after reference appended in SASAUTOS.

[SASKiwi · Accepted solution]

What you are seeing is standard SAS behaviour. When you first call %A it will not be found as SASAUTOS follows. SAS defines a dummy macro called A since it cant find the real A. This then blocks you from finding the real A after your SASAUTOS statement.

A good practice is to put your SASAUTOS statement into your AUTOEXEC.SAS program so it will be run each time you start SAS. That way even a macro call as your first program statement will always work.

[Ksharp]

It should be LIBNAME not FILENAME, if I was right.

[RahulG]

It is filename.

[Ksharp]

That is a SAS program file , Not compiled macro of SAS .
You can't use it in this way. Should be :

%include 'c:\temp\a.sas';

%include 'c:\temp\b.sas';

[Quentin]

Set the system option mrecall. That tells SAS to search the autocall library every time it sees a macro reference, even if it has previously searched and not found it. (The docs says this is inefficient and should only be used in development.)