NOTE 49-169: The meaning of an identifier... - how to avoid note without inserting blanks?

[ute]

I am trying to write a macro that puts a prefix inside all quoted strings in a list. It does work, but throws Note 49-169 for all prefix that seem not to make sense to SAS.

%macro prefixstrings(stringlist, prefix);
  %sysfunc(prxchange(s/\'(\w+)/'&prefix$1/,-1,&stringlist))
%mend;

%put %prefixstrings(unquoted test 'quoted test', x);
/* no complaints because apparently '...'x is detected as having a meaning */
%put %prefixstrings(unquoted test 'quoted test', A);
/* NOTE 49-169 ... :-(  */

Is there an easy workaround to avoid this? Putting a blank before &prefix is no option since the result is undesired.

[s_lassen]

Put the initial quote into a look-behind assertion, like this:

%macro prefixstrings(stringlist, prefix);
  %sysfunc(prxchange(s/(?<=%str(%'))(\w+)/&prefix$1/,-1,&stringlist))
%mend;

[ute]

Nice workaround, thank you 🙂

I secretly hoped it would be possible to forbid SAS macro compiler to look too deeply into the code it is meant to produce, but this one does the current job, definitely.