Help With %NRSTR code

[mcook]

I have the following code. 

data Testing1;
	input A $ B $ C $ D $;
	datalines;
a*$"B, $%\- D_D( A&5`
;
run;

proc transpose data=testing1 out=testing1;
	var A B C D;
run;

proc sql noprint;
	select Col1 into :VarNames
		separated by '|'
	from Testing1;
quit;

%PUT VarNames=%NRBQUOTE(&VarNames.);
%LET VNum=%SYSFUNC(CountW(%NRSTR(&VarNames.),|));
%PUT VNum=&VNum.;

I am unable to get VNum to = 4. 

VarNames=a*$"B,|$%\-|D_D(|A&5`

with | as a delimiter, there should be 4 words. 

but VNum keeps coming out as 1

[PaigeMiller · Accepted solution]

%LET VNum=%SYSFUNC(CountW(%NRBQUOTE(&VarNames.),|));

When working with a macro variable name, you want %NRBQUOTE and not %nrstr 

[mcook]

Bah.  I'd already tried NRBQUOTE and it didn't work.  It gave me a recursion error.  so i changed it to NRSTR.

But i just tried it again, copying what you wrote, and it worked perfectly.  Thank you.

I must have had a syntax error I didn't notice.  

[ballardw]

Part of the issue is the unbalanced quote.

From the documentation of %STR and %NRSTR

They also mask the following characters when they occur in pairs and when they are not matched and are marked by a preceding %

' " ( )

So since your example single quote does not appear in a pair you are getting the | characters after the " as one word.

Personally by the time I need to use NRSTR or similar I start looking very closely at the whole process. Macro quoting is pretty dangerous when things go unexpected.

[Tom]

Personally I find it much easier to just use %SUPERQ() to add quoting to a macro variable.

50
51    %let varnames=%superq(varnames);
52    %LET VNum=%SYSFUNC(CountW(&VarNames,|));
53    %PUT VNum=&VNum.;
VNum=4