Automate a Macro

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Hi,

how do I offset this below so that the start= will always be the first month of the year (this year it’s 01jan2016 but next year I need it to say 01jan2017 and so on) and then have the stop= as the previous month? The idea is I want to automate this to prevent user error by keying in the incorrect month.

%macro scants(start=01jan2016,stop=01apr2016);

  %local i;

    %do i=-%sysfunc(intck(month,"&start."d,%sysfunc(today()))) %to -%sysfunc(intck(month,"&stop."d,%sysfunc(today())));

      %let runmonth=%sysfunc(intnx(month,%sysfunc(today()),&i.),yymmn6.);

      %let month=%sysfunc(intnx(month,%sysfunc(today()),&i.),monyy5.);

       %let month2=%sysfunc(intnx(month,%sysfunc(today()),&i.),date9.);

       %put &month2.;

%let startcomp = %sysfunc(intnx(month,"&month2"d,0,b),date9.); %put &startcomp.;

%let endcomp = %sysfunc(intnx(month,"&month2"d,0,e),date9.); %put &endcomp.;

[Kurt_Bremser]

Oh my, what an eyesore.

For $DEITY's sake, just do your calculations in a data step and use call symput() at the end to store the results in macro variables.

data _null_;
today = date();
lastmonth = intnx('month',today,-1,'begin');
yearstart = intnx('year',today,0,'begin');
call symput('stop',put(lastmonth,5.));
call symput('start',put(yearstart,5.));
run;

Note that it is not necessary to format the dates, the raw values can easily be used in comparisons with other date values.

If you want to call a macro repeatedly, calculate (or read) the parameters in a data step and use call execute() to call the macro.