Using macro(?) for length of character and Apparent symbolic reference not resolved error.

[tonoplast]

Hi everyone.

I am new to SAS, and this is my first post. I hope that this post would not frustrate experienced coders.

I'm using SAS Enterprise Guide 7.1

I have been battling with using CHAR and NUM from table/macro and use them in the iteration.

What I want to do eventually is to use each row of variables (char) and (num) to change the length of characters of different columns.

For now, I have done:

data varlentable;

input name $ mlen;

AAA 1

BBB 4

CCC 4

DDD 8

EEE 10

FFF 12

GGG 15

;

run;

proc sql;

select name

into: names

separated by ','

from varlentable;

select mlen

into: CL separated by ','

from varlentable;

quit;

%put &names.;

%put &CL.;

data test;

set varlentable;

do i = 1 by 1 while(scan("&names.",i) ne ' ');

thisnum = scan("&CL.",i,',');

thischar = scan("&names.",i,',');

output;

end;

drop i;

run;

This creates 'test' table and it seems to work.

data test2;

length thischar $ thisnum.; /* if i put $1 for example, it works*/

set varlentable;

do i = 1 by 1 while(scan("&names.",i) ne ' ');

thisnum = scan("&CL.",i,',');

thischar = scan("&names.",i,',');

output;

end;

drop i;

run;

This doesn't work and says:

length this char $ &thisnum.;

Warning: Apparent symbolic reference THISNUM not resolved.

Expecting a variable length specification.

I have not been able to resolve this issue. Please help. What am I doing wrong?

Regards,

S

[Reeza]

Can you please post the exact code and log?
Make sure to specify the macro debugging options such as MPRINT and SYMBOLGEN to get the full information.

---

@tonoplast wrote:

Hi everyone.

I am new to SAS, and this is my first post. I hope that this post would not frustrate experienced coders.

I'm using SAS Enterprise Guide 7.1

I have been battling with using CHAR and NUM from table/macro and use them in the iteration.

What I want to do eventually is to use each row of variables (char) and (num) to change the length of characters of different columns.

For now, I have done:

data varlentable;

input name $ mlen;

AAA 1

BBB 4

CCC 4

DDD 8

EEE 10

FFF 12

GGG 15

;

run;

proc sql;

select name

into: names

separated by ','

from varlentable;

select mlen

into: CL separated by ','

from varlentable;

quit;

%put &names.;

%put &CL.;

data test;

set varlentable;

do i = 1 by 1 while(scan("&names.",i) ne ' ');

thisnum = scan("&CL.",i,',');

thischar = scan("&names.",i,',');

output;

end;

drop i;

run;

This creates 'test' table and it seems to work.

data test2;

length thischar $ thisnum.; /* if i put $1 for example, it works*/

set varlentable;

do i = 1 by 1 while(scan("&names.",i) ne ' ');

thisnum = scan("&CL.",i,',');

thischar = scan("&names.",i,',');

output;

end;

drop i;

run;

This doesn't work and says:

length this char $ &thisnum.;

Warning: Apparent symbolic reference THISNUM not resolved.

Expecting a variable length specification.

I have not been able to resolve this issue. Please help. What am I doing wrong?

Regards,

S

---

[Tom · Accepted solution]

Of course something like:

length thischar $ thisnum.; 

doesn't work. It makes no sense. The LENGTH statement wants numbers for the length, not variable names (actually that looks more like you are trying to reference a character format).

Why not just generate the NAME/LENGTH pairs directly from your metadata table?

proc sql noprint;
  select catx(' ',name,cats('$',mlen))
    into :lengths separated by ' '
  from varlentable
  ;
quit;

data want;
  length &lengths;
  set have;
run;

[tonoplast]

I can't thank you enough, Tom! I've been battling with this for the last couple of days!

That is so much simpler and works great!

[Ksharp]

proc sql noprint;
  select catx(' ',name,cats('char(',mlen,')'))
    into :lengths separated by ','
  from varlentable
  ;
alter table have
modify &varlentable ;
quit;