Function Inside String

[Planck]

Hi,

I would like to use a function which returns a string as a part of another string, without declaring it before.

That's very easy but I don't know

It's during an import from Excel:

sheet = "sheet_substrn(&datee.,max(1,length(&datee.)-3),4)"

It doesn't understand it need to replace the function with the value.

Thanks for answer, and sorry for the basic question.

[LinusH]

I'm not sure it's very simple. 

Can you give examples of cell values and the desired outcome in SAS?

Also, please describe why you are doing this.

[Astounding · Accepted solution]

You will need to switch from SAS language functions to macro language.  For some functions, such as LENGTH, there is already a macro version of the function available (%LENGTH).  But for others (SUBSTR, MAX), where there is no macro version of the function, you will need to apply %SYSFUNC to allow macro language to use the DATA step function. 

sheet = "sheet_%sysfunc(substr(&datee.,%sysfunc(max(1,%length(&datee.)-3)),4))"

I think I got the parentheses in the right places.  Also note, macro language treats text as character, so you can use SUBSTR instead of SUBSTRN.

[Planck]

Thanks it works like this 🙂

[Astounding]

Glad it works, but I may have overcomplicated this a bit.  Macro language does contain a %SUBSTR function.

[Planck]

Yes that's a stange solution.

But it's ok if it works, I don't ask for more 🙂 Thanks for your help!