ERROR: DATA STEP Component Object failure. Aborted during the COMPILATION phase.

[Lakshmi_G90]

Hi All,

Greetings for the day !!

I have been working on a macro variable called "value" which holds directory paths and some macro names in it.

Example:

Value

sas\\states\test.txt

operations.sas.klist

%OPRMN

data _null_;
i=0;
do until((&var. = " ") or (&value.= " "));
i=i+1;
call symput('scan("&Var.",i,"*")','scan("&value.",i,"*")' );
output;
end;
run;

Here,  \\, . these characters in Value variable are causing the issue and throwing the below error.

ERROR: DATA STEP Component Object failure. Aborted during the COMPILATION phase.

ERROR 200-322: The symbol is not recognized and will be ignored.

Can any one please suggest me on this issue.

Looking forward for the solution

Thanks in advance !

[Kurt_Bremser]

What are the contents of macro variables &var and &value?

In this step:

data _null_;
i=0;
do until((&var. = " ") or (&value.= " "));
i=i+1;
call symput('scan("&Var.",i,"*")','scan("&value.",i,"*")' );
output;
end;
run;

they need to resolve to string literals (text in quotes) or variable names to be syntactically correct.

But, since you do not have any incoming data (either from a dataset or an external file), there are no data step variables to use, so variable names make no sense.

In the data you posted in the first part:

Value

sas\\states\test.txt

operations.sas.klist

%OPRMN

there is nothing that resembles a string literal, so it can't be that, either.

What are you trying to achieve?

[Lakshmi_G90]

Hi KurtBremser ,

Thanks for your response.

Var and value are of my 2 macro variables which are having data as below.

Var

--------

a

b

c

Value

----------------

sas\\states\tax\cose\test.txt

operations.sas.klist

%OPRMN

I'm trying to create a, b, c macro variables by using call symput and pass the values respectively from the another variable called "VALUE" (sas\\states\tax\cose\test.txt,  operations.sas.klist,   %OPRMN) .

For this I have written the previous code which is causing error in reading single '\' and '.' 

I used %nrstr, %nrbquote functions also, still no luck.

[Kurt_Bremser]

Use a dataset with name/value pairs, and then it is simple and works:

data lookup;
input name :$10. value :$50.;
datalines;
a sas\\states\tax\cose\test.txt
b operations.sas.klist
c %OPRMN
;

data _null_;
set lookup;
call symputx(name,value,'G');
run;

%put _user_;

partial log:

 85         
 86         %put _user_;
 GLOBAL A sas\\states\tax\cose\test.txt
 GLOBAL B operations.sas.klist
 GLOBAL C %OPRMN

[Lakshmi_G90]

Many thanks for the solution.
Could you please let me know what was wrong in my previous code, why the \, . were not getting read by SAS.
I was doing this by using macro variables, but getting error. Can't we do this with macro variables..?

[Kurt_Bremser]

Doing it from macro variables is possible, but you get WARNINGs for data that looks like macro triggers:

%let var=a*b*c;
%let value=sas\\states\tax\cose\test.txt*operations.sas.klist*%OPRMN;

data _null_;
do i = 1 to countw("&var.","*");
  call symput(scan("&var.",i,"*"),scan("&value.",i,"*"));
end;
run;

%put _user_;

[Lakshmi_G90]

Many Thanks KurtBremser  and Tom  🙂

[Tom]

This line looks wrong.

call symput('scan("&Var.",i,"*")','scan("&value.",i,"*")' );

You are asking SYMPUT to create a macro variable whose name includes invalid characters like ("&.*,).

Did you want to call the data step function SCAN?  If so then don't put it inside of quotes.

call symput(scan("&Var.",i,"*"),scan("&value.",i,"*") );

There is no need to build your own iteration logic. SAS has an iterative DO loop.

do i=1 to countw("&var.","*");