Resolving FIND in macro

[Davanden]

I am trying to use a macro to parse some strings.  This simplified code is supposed to find the rightmost underscore.  However, the Index is resolved as zero:

%macro resolveindex;
%let thisvar = PriPrb_SUM;
%LET Index = %SYSFUNC(FIND("&ThisVar.","_",-33));
%mend;

Since I know that macro variables are always character, I tried this:

%LET Index = %SYSFUNC(PUT(FIND("&ThisVar.","_",-33),2.);

However, I get an error message that PUT function is unknown.

How do I get this to work?

[ballardw]

%let thisvar = PriPrb_SUM;
%LET Index = %SYSFUNC(FIND(&ThisVar.,_,-33));

%put &index.;

Quotes in macro calls to data step functions are usually not needed since the macro processor treats everything as character.

The function to examine a macro variable is %put.

If you want to use the data step Put functions with %sysfunc you need to use either PUTN or PUTC explicitly.

Note: if your Thisvar might have commas then you have another issue as it would be interpreted as a delimiter in the function call and you would need to use on of the macro quoting functions to have the comma ignored in the Find function.