formatting by loop

[swimmer]

Hi,

I wonder if there is a faster way to format and informat the variables. For example, I have a dataset which contains the variable of var1, var2, var3, var4 and the corresponding formats are var1_fmt, var2_fmt, var3_fmt, var4_fmt. Can I write some kind of loop to format the four variables instead of

format var1 var1_fmt. var2 var2_fmt. var3 var3_fmt var4_var4_fmt;

Thanks.l

[Tom · Accepted solution]

You can write a macro to get anything you want, (except Alice!)

%macro fmt(varlist);

%local i ;

%do i=1 %to %sysfunc(countw(&varlist,%str( )));

%scan(&varlist,&i,%str( )) %scan(&varlist,&i,%str( ))_fmt.

%end;

%mend fmt;

format %fmt(var1 var2 var3) ;