Using macro variable in pipe

[JacquesR]

I am just not getting something that should be obvious, so forgive my ignorance.

I have looked:

https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Programming/Making-macro-variables-resolve-with-filename-pipe-com...

https://communities.sas.com/t5/General-SAS-Programming/SAS-Macro-using-doubles-quotes-filename-pipe/...

https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Procedures/macro-variable-resolution-in-pipe/td-p/112978

https://communities.sas.com/t5/General-SAS-Programming/Macro-variable-in-filename-statement/td-p/343...

One would think that after that, I would have the solution, but no matter which combination I try, I'm not getting the right result:

So I want to replace this:

FILENAME _FList PIPE 'dir "c:\Users\...\Study-data\Posts from 20* to 2020-*.XLSX" /b ';

with this:

%LET DataDir=c:\Users\...\Study-data\;
FILENAME _FList1 PIPE 'dir &DataDir.Posts from 20* to 2020-*.XLSX /b';

But no matter how I try to quote it, I am missing what I am sure is a pretty obvious solution.

Thanks in advance

[Kurt_Bremser]

This is probably macro mistake #1 for macro newbies 🙂 Been there, done that 😉

Whenever you want macro variables to resolve in a string, use double quotes instead of single quotes.

[yabwon · Accepted solution]

%LET DataDir=c:\Users\...\Study-data\;
FILENAME _FList1 PIPE "dir ""&DataDir.Posts from 20* to 2020-*.XLSX"" /b";