macro problem

[Tal]

if &&&who resolves to 17 then why is William 23 excluded from the output results. Can someone please explain?

options mprint symbolgen;

data kids;

    input name $ age;

    call symput(name, age);

  datalines;

  Cora 21

  Emma 15

  Hannah 17

  William 23

  ;

  %let who = Hannah;

  proc print data=kids;

  title "Kids older than &who";

  where age > &&&who;

  run;

[Tom · Accepted solution]

It is included when I run it.  Note: Use call symputX() to avoid the spaces in the macro variable values.

307    proc print data=kids;

SYMBOLGEN:  Macro variable WHO resolves to Hannah

308    title "Kids older than &who";

309    where age

SYMBOLGEN:  && resolves to &.

SYMBOLGEN:  Macro variable WHO resolves to Hannah

SYMBOLGEN:  Macro variable HANNAH resolves to           17

309!             > &&&who;

310    run;

NOTE: There were 2 observations read from the data set WORK.KIDS.

      WHERE age>17;

[Tal]

but does not the macro processor ignores spaces before the 1st non-blank character and everything after the ";" in the value to be assigned to a macro variable?

[Tom]

Yes, but CALL SYMPUT() does not perform a %LET. 

In your particular code

age > &&&who

the leading spaces are not a problem, but in other cases they can be.  For example if comparing the value in a quoted string.

"17" = "&&&who"

Then the leading spaces in the value of the macro variable HANNAH would cause that condition to be false as "17" does not equal "      17".

[Tal]

i see. A very good point.

Thanks Tom

[Reeza]

Its not from mine. You must have some other mistake in your code.

	Kids older than Hannah	5
	09:20 Monday, November 18, 2013

Obs

name

age

	1	Cora	21
	4	William	23

[Astounding]

I would expect no problems from the code the way you posted it, but there would be a problem if you had a longer name such as Bartholomew.  If you can't post the exact code that you ran, it might help to add this statement after the first DATA step:  %put _user_;

Good luck.

[Tal]

thanks guys,

i actually had to restart my SAS to get the results you all got.Weird...