Slightly OT Question for Chris

[frisco]

Chris, I just read your blog entry on nerds and you mentioned that a hypothetical holiday greeting card might say %let peace='on Earth';
Of course, I can't help asking, why the quotes?

[Doc_Duke]

A nerd's holiday card must be syntactically correct. In SAS, text constants are enclosed in quotes.....

[LinusH]

Syntactically, text constants assigned to a macro variable doesn't have to be enclosed in quotes. It's more a question of how you will use the macro variable later on...

/Linus

[ChrisHemedinger]

Actually, Cynthia Z suggested a true geek might write:

[pre]
options symbolgen;
%let what = peace;
%let where = &&&what;
%let how = And let it begin with me.;

%put Let there be &what &where.. &how;
[/pre]

[Cynthia_sas]

Of, course, the code assumes that
[pre]
%let peace = on Earth;
[/pre]

has already been entered into the Global System Table with a %LET statement.

cynthia