Storing generated dates using symputx (Macro Var Values are incorrect?)

[jbear]

Hello SAS community,

I was able to tweak my date generating step, but I want to drop those date values into macro variables, but the values are not right? I'm using the symputx function for this task...

%Let Begin=6/30/2013;

%Let Periods=25;

data datesexp (keep=futdates);

     do i=0 to &Periods;

               futdates=intnx('month',input("&Begin",mmddyy10.,i,'end');

               call symputx(cats('DtVar',put(_n_,8.)),futdates);

               format futdates mmddyy10.;

               output;

     end;

run;

%put _user_;

Output is below, not in sync..

	Assigned McrVar	Assigned McrVar (Convrt)	Generated
DTVAR1	20300	7/30/2015	6/30/2013
DTVAR2	19570	7/30/2013	7/31/2013
DTVAR3	19601	8/30/2013	8/31/2013
DTVAR4	19631	9/29/2013	9/30/2013
DTVAR5	19662	10/30/2013	10/31/2013
DTVAR6	19692	11/29/2013	11/30/2013
DTVAR7	19723	12/30/2013	12/31/2013
DTVAR8	19754	1/30/2014	1/31/2014
DTVAR9	19782	2/27/2014	2/28/2014
DTVAR10	19813	5/30/2014	3/31/2014
DTVAR11	19843	4/29/2014	4/30/2014
DTVAR12	19874	5/30/2014	5/31/2014
DTVAR13	19904	6/29/2014	6/30/2014
DTVAR14	19935	7/30/2014	7/31/2014
DTVAR15	19966	8/30/2014	8/31/2014
DTVAR16	19996	9/29/2014	9/30/2014
DTVAR17	20027	10/30/2014	10/30/2014
DTVAR18	20057	11/29/2014	11/30/2014
DTVAR19	20088	12/30/2014	12/31/2014
DTVAR20	20119	1/30/2015	1/31/2015
DTVAR21	20147	2/27/2015	2/28/2015
DTVAR22	20178	3/30/2015	3/31/2015
DTVAR23	20208	4/29/2015	4/30/2015
DTVAR24	20239	5/30/2015	5/31/2015
DTVAR25	20269	6/29/2015	6/30/2015
DTVAR26	20300	7/30/2015	7/31/2015

[Quentin · Accepted solution]

Hi,

You have to be careful with global macro variables.  I suspect some of those values are from previous runs.

I noticed two issues:

1. missing closing parenthesis on input() function

2. On CALL SYMPUTX you use put _n_ for the numeric suffix.  But _n_ will always be 1 (the datastep iterates only once).  You probably want put (i,8.) .

Maybe something like below (I added date format to the symputx, which you may not want.

data datesexp (keep=futdates);
  do i=0 to &Periods;
     futdates=intnx('month',input("&Begin",mmddyy10.),i,'end');
     call symputx(cats('DtVar',put(i,8.)),put(futdates,mmddyy10.));
     format futdates mmddyy10.;
     output;
  end;
run;

HTH,

--Q.

[jbear]

Thank you that worked.

[Tom]

You code is missing a paren somewhere.

But what is the actual question here?

Do you want the generated dates to start from July instead of June?  If so then change the DO loop start and end values.

Do you want the generated macro variables to have the formatted dates instead of the number of days since 1/1/1960?  If so then use PUT() function inside CALL SYMPUTX .

[jbear]

Thanks, those were exactly the anwers to my question. I'll continue refining my programming.