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deleted_user
Not applicable
This isn't an Office issue per se, and if there's a better forum please let me know, but I've seen similar issues addressed here.

I'm getting to SAS with OLE ('SAS.application') and have been seeing spurious messages and having problems that make no sense to me. I noticed that some SAS statements passed with a submit do not resolve correctly. Others cause messages such as "NOTE 49-169: The meaning of an identifier after a quoted string may change in a future SAS release...." even though the strings are all fine.

I did not find examples that specified any details for Submit other than using literal strings. I thought it might have been a variant type issue, but when that was a dead end, I tried my same examples using VBA, since that's what the documentation uses, and got the same errors/messages.

I noticed that the statements that are causing problems contained things such as quote marks (") and back slashes. In one case, I tried doubling up on the backslashes within a string and SAS stopped giving me the "NOTE 49-169" for that one. I also noticed that if I stick to single quotes, things work, but if I have a double quote mark in the string, SAS sometimes treats it as if the submitted statement ended there. This behavior is not consistent among statements. For example:

Set OleSAS = CreateObject("SAS.Application")
OleSAS.submit("%let f=""C:hello.SAS"" ;")
OleSAS.submit("%put f is &f;")

That would all work, but if I add a backslash after the "C:" then I get the NOTE. Two backslashes would work. OleSAS.submit("%include &f;") would cause an error. Changing things to single quotes works. Changing the %let f= to a %include causes things to behave as if the submitted statement ended at the first quote mark. A submit with a %put and an almost identical one with a %include will work as expected only for the %put.

In the above example, some quotes are doubled up because I used VBA, but

submit('%include "C:\hello.SAS" ;')

causes the same problem when used in a language that supports that syntax for strings.

If I write all the statements to a file instead of submitting them, and then include the file, things work fine. Of course that assumes no double quotes in the include. So the statements themselves are fine if SAS gets them a different way.

What is going on and how do I work around these issues when using submit method calls?
2 REPLIES 2
deleted_user
Not applicable
You will have to forgive me for not being very familiar with how the SAS Institute handles things these days. I started using SAS back in the 1980s. The way things used to work was that a company would have an on-site SAS representative for support. If that person could not find an answer, even after extensive research, that person would contact the SAS Institute. That support channel was not for everyday questions, but for issues that typically needed resolving with some sort of update or ZAP. I was that support person for many years. When I had a problem, the support person at SAS would escalate it to the appropriate person and I'd get a fix for the problem.

It's been a while since I've used SAS regularly so I had no need to contact support for the past two decades. But I tried the on-line system, and I am getting nowhere. I get email with links to documentation I already read. If I reply that I already read it, and ask very specific questions, I still get no answers. I just keep getting emails with more links to documentation.

I made it very clear that I read the documentation. I wrote back with a specific link to the documentation for the submit method. I sent a simple three line example that does not work as documented. I can't even get anybody to take a simple three line program and either tell me why it does not conform to the documentation, or admit that there's a bug that needs fixing.

I said that if there is anything in the documentation that shows that I am doing anything wrong, I'd like to see it. But all I get are useless emails. Here is the latest response:

"Have you checked our OnLine doc ?

You can go here: http://support.sas.com/onlinedoc/913/docMainpage.jsp

and scroll thru the Contents to the SAS Data Providers: ADO/OLE DB Cookbook -

I hope this is helpful - please let me know if the questions remain!"

It could not have been more clear from my previous requests that I read the documentation and that it did not help. The latest email suggests that I may not have even looked at the most basic introduction to the topic.

How do I get a problem escalated to a support person who actually understands OLE, can actually tell me what is going on, and can get things working or fixed?

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