adding percent chars to macrovariable

[havmaage]

Hi, 

I need to execute a sql using like condition, That means i need to add % signs to the condition string. I having a hard time figure out how to do it. 

I have a macrovariable that has the value  "tablename"

what i want to do is to put % chars before and in the end of the string. I have tried using %str,%nrquote and %quote 

%let tb="tablername";
%let likecondition=%str(%&tb%);
%put likecondition;

I have also tried compress but it seems that i cannot mask the % as string. 

have 

"tablername"

want 

"%tablename%"

How do i do this in sas macro or data step if that is preferred. 

[PaigeMiller · Accepted solution]

You need a double percent sign to result in the single-percent sign in the output, see https://documentation.sas.com/doc/en/pgmmvacdc/9.4/mcrolref/n09tblrxldh8k0n1kt6dkj3xlxug.htm

%let tb=tablername;
%let likecondition="%nrstr(%%)&tb%nrstr(%%)";

%put &=tb;
%put &=likecondition;

Except for rare cases, I would not enclose the value of a macro variable in quotes or double-quotes, so I would use:

%let tb=tablername;
%let likecondition=%nrstr(%%)&tb%nrstr(%%);

%put &=tb;
%put &=likecondition;

and then use "&likecondition" 

[Tom]

Is there some reason the first macro variable includes the quotes?  If it does include the quotes and you want the % inside the quotes you probably need to first remove the quotes.

But you probably would like to include single quotes around the value with the % in it to prevent the macro processor from typing to call a macro with the same name as the table.

If you can use a data step it is easier since you don't have to worry about the fighting the macro processor.

So if you already have the table name in a dataset and want to generate a macro variable use something like:

18    data _null_;
19      tb="tablename";
20      call symputx('likecondition',quote(cats('%',tb,'%'),"'"));
21    run;

NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time):
      real time           0.00 seconds
      cpu time            0.00 seconds


22
23    %put &=likecondition;
LIKECONDITION='%tablename%'