Suggest you try the logic to determine the SAS behavior. For consideration, your Y2 assignment statement is improperly coded, where you are using the same character as the delimiter *AND* also in your constant string -- so you must have two consecutive double-quote marks. As you have coded the Y2 assignment statement, SAS will eventually issue an diagnostic message about unbalanced quotation marks or something similar.
Also, your "I.E. " reference to A is as a SAS variable and not a constant -- you have never declared a SAS variable named A (neither character or SAS-default numeric).
Suggest you heavy-up on reading DOC about COMPRESS function and take SAS DATA step processing for a ride -- use some PUTLOG _ALL_; commands and some addditional conditional diagnostic statements, such as:
* you fill in expression below, as needed. ;
IF THEN PUTLOG "YEP";
ELSE PUTLOG "NOPE";
Scott Barry
SBBWorks, Inc.