Macro variable -> paragraph text with CR LF

[urs]

Hi,

I am finding myself in a tight corner, and I would really appreciate your help. 

Question : How can I assign text with paragraphs(CR LF) to a SAS Macro Variable? 

Short story: I am currently working on a generic solution for sending e-mails from SAS.  This should be in a form of a macro : %SendMail(To,From,Subject,Body ... ) . The user should only call the macro and feed the proper parameters.

All is good until you realize that the e-mail body will contain long text with paragraphs (i.e. CR LR) .  

How can I assign a text with paragraphs to a macro variable ? 

[Tom · Accepted solution]

There is nothing stopping you from putting CR and LF into macro variables.  For example.

data _null_;
  call symputx('email_message',cats('Line one.','0D0A'x,'Line two.'));
run;
%let email_message=%superq(email_message);

But it would probably be easier for the user and for your coding if you just told them to replace the paragraph marks with some fixed printable character or series of characters.

%let email_message=Line one.|Line two.;

Then your program can replace them with paragraph marks when it generates the email.

[urs]

Thank you Tom.

Setting up a convention on how to build e-mail bodies should do the trick.