Using pipe with % in text

[bsas94]

Hello,

I've been trying to execute the following code:

%let line = '%put NOTE: foo;';

data _null_;
 infile "echo &line. >> /opt/testfolder/test_program.sas" pipe;
input;
put _infile_;
run;

However, when getting the results from the execution, the file I'm trying to append is not appended.

If I remove the "%" character from the first line, the command works just fine. 

How could I achieve the desired result (writing this piece of code to a file)? I've tried to use some functions such as str, nrstr, quote and nrquote and I wasn't able to execute it properly.

Thank you

[FreelanceReinh · Accepted solution]

Hello @bsas94,

I would rather omit the single quotes in the %LET statement and instead use the %NRSTR function to mask the percent sign and the semicolon:

%let line = %nrstr(%put NOTE: foo;);

Then you can use the %TSLIT macro (see Sample 25076: Resolve a macro variable within single quotation marks) in the INFILE statement to add quotes where needed. Apparently, you are on a Unix system, whereas my suggestions below were tested on a Windows workstation (using a different path, of course).

To append the SAS code %put NOTE: foo; without quotes to a text file:

infile %tslit(echo &line >> /opt/testfolder/test_program.sas) pipe;

To append '%put NOTE: foo;' including the single quotes to a text file:

infile %tslit(echo %tslit(&line) >> /opt/testfolder/test_program.sas) pipe;

[Tom]

Huh?

Aren't you making this way too complicated?

data _null_;
  file "/opt/testfolder/test_program.sas" mod;
  put '%put NOTE: foo;';
run;

If you have the value in a macro variable use SYMGET() to get it into a character variable. 

data _null_;
  file "/opt/testfolder/test_program.sas" mod;
  length line $200;
  line = symget('line');
  put line ;
run;