I want to pass two long strings into a sas macro, like this:
%some_macro(first=this is quite a long string, two=and so is this);
I can define macros where I pass an argument like the first, but if I have two arguments like this it seems SAS gets confused, and I get errors about strings being 262 characters or longer. I suspect I should be using some sort of quoting or something, but I'm not sure exactly what to use. Any ideas?
Mark
Mark,
It would help if you posted an example of code that produces the error.
%macro
title
"&first &second"
proc freq data=hsurvey2.hsa05_adult_public;
table year;
run;
%mend
%two(first=this is a long string, second=and so is this);
It turns out that this works fine. The problem in my code is something else entirely. I'll try to track that down.
There is a limit on the length of a macro variable. Should be around 32,000.
The error message you report can be suppressed by using the option NOQUOTELENMAX.
http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lrdict/64316/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a002233891.htm
You would see it if your macro did something like.
data out;
var1="&first";
run;
Available on demand!
Missed SAS Innovate Las Vegas? Watch all the action for free! View the keynotes, general sessions and 22 breakouts on demand.
Learn how use the CAT functions in SAS to join values from multiple variables into a single value.
Find more tutorials on the SAS Users YouTube channel.