Conditional %INCLUDE Statements

[jjjames]

Thanks again for all the replies.

As Tom suggested^^ the external files are both .sas files with simple hard coded assignment statements. E.g.

File A:

width=196;

length=100;

depth=250;

File B:

width=200;

length=450;

depth=65;

there is a process elsewhere which reads an excel data set and generates this simple code ^ which I need to read in conditionally on my variable 'colour' being either "red" or "blue"

thanks again

[Tom]

So in that case you do not want to conditionally include the files, instead you want to conditionally execute the code that the files contain.  So place the %INCLUDE statements inside of logic blocks so that they execute at the appropriate place.  Because you are not reading these variables from either a source dataset or via INPUT statement the values will by default be retained, so you might want to worry about clearing the values.

data want ;

  set have;

  if colour = 'BLUE' then do;

%include 'file A'

end;

else if colour='RED' then do;

%include 'file B';

end;

output;

call missing (of _all_);

run;

[Peter_L]

I use the following method (careful with the semicolons):

1. Define a macro like this:

%macro do_if(a);

%if &a %then

  %let c=;

%else

  %let c=*;

&c

%mend do_if;

2. Use it like this:

%do_if(&var = red) %include "red.sas";

It works by commenting out the rest of the line up to the final semicolon when the condition is false. An even simpler way is to use a variable which could contain * and just place it at the start of the line. The logic is not so self-documenting.

&star %include "blue.sas";