Macro with Variable-list from rows

[deleted_user]

Hi,

I want to take some rows as my variable, whitch I put in a macro to Plot it.

plot (&yvar.)*xvar

But I dont know how I can make it more dynamic. Now I define my yvar manual for each plot (e.g. %plot (yvar=xyz_1 xyz_7 xyz_11 ...). How I can instruct SAS that it take all rows which begin with "xyz_" as yvar ? Maybe do you have an idea? Thanks?


Lex

[LinusH]

It's a bit unclear what you mean by "take some rows". My guess is that you mean variable/column name. In this case you can use DICTIONARY.COLUMNS, or data step functions to create desired macro variables/calls.

If you mean value within a row of data, it doesn't make sense to me. Please attach some sample data to describe your situation better.

/Linus

[deleted_user]

yes, I mean the name from the variable.

(1)
v1 v2 xyz_1 xyz_3 xyz_7
a a 2 3 1
a a 2 3 3

(2)
v1 v2 xyz_2 xyz_4 xyz_5
b b 1 2 1
b b 2 2 2

From this I want to create a varlist and give this to macrovaribale.
%let varlist1=columnames separated by space; in this case xyz_1 xyz_3 xyz_7
%let varlist2=columnames separated by space; in this case xyz_2 xyz_4 xyz_5
%plot (yvar=&varlist1);
%plot (yvar=&varlist2);

Lex

[sbb]

Yes, the DICTIONARY.COLUMNS view will serve you well, using PROC SQL to generate a SAS macro variable using INTO with the appropriate WHERE clause.

Using the Google advanced search argument below, you will find SAS-hosted documentation and supplemental technical/conference papers on this type of topic, available at the SAS support http://support.sas.com/ website:


proc sql dictionary columns generate code site:sas.com


Scott Barry
SBBWorks, Inc.

[ChrisNZ]

Scott's reply is the best in principle. However, accessing the dictionary can be very slow if you have many tables, especially if you have libraries pointing to RDBMS data.
To build a list from specific known tables, extracting table metadata directly is faster, if not as clean as querying the dictionary.
[pre]
%macro makevarlist(table, prefix);
%let varlist=;
%let dsid=%sysfunc(open(&table));
%do i = 1 %to %sysfunc(attrn(&dsid,nvars));
%let varname=%sysfunc(varname(&dsid,&i));
%if %substr(&varname,1,3)=&prefix %then %let varlist=&varlist &varname;
%end;
%let dsid=%sysfunc(close(&dsid));
%put &varlist;
%mend;
%makevarlist(sashelp.citiwk, WSP)