need a macro to read excel tables with similar names in a certain file into sas

[Dingdang]

hi all,

i am a beginner in sas and wondering if it is possible to write a macro to read external data like excel tables with similar names (eg. reports_a, reports_b, reports_c etc. ) which i saved in a certain file into sas. I wrote sth. like

%macro imp (path, name, n);

%Do i=1 %To &n;

proc import out=libl.test&i;

Datafile="&path.&name.&i..xls";

sheet="Table1";

run;

%end;

%mend imp

It doesnt look so good. Can someone give me some tips how i can do this? plus, actually i dont want to give n as a macro variable, cause i probabably dont know how many tables are there (of course i can check the file itself and get to know n myself, but that is not so schick, and everytime i got new reports coming in, this number is going to change), is it possible that sas does a loop and read the tables one by one until no tables are left unread? and is it possible that i save my sas dataset with the index from the original excel tables, like in my example a, b, c etc.? so that when i look at the name of the sas data sets, i know already exactly from whom this report comes from, from person a, b oder c and so on.

I am very grateful for any kind of help and suggestions!

BR  Dingdang

[LinusH]

You can first read the the contents of a directory (and stor it in a work table), and "pipe" all Excel file names into your macro instead, i.e. by using the call execute() construct.

[Dingdang]

Hi LinusH

thanks for your prompt answer. I cannt really understand your method (have only one week experience with sas ). can you probably give me an example code, how this is going to look like?

would be very thankful for that.

Dingdang

[LinusH]

Ok, this is maybe the first week kind of logic, but you'll probably learn something anyhow...

You can either use filename pipe to issue a OS dir command - which you can call in a data step.

meta code:

filename myDir pipe 'dir search-path';

data _null_;

infile myDir;

input fileName input_spec;

if subsetting;

call execute('%imp(' || fileName || ');');

run;

[Dingdang]

hi LinusH,

thanks for your code. In combination with Oleg's code i think i understand better how directory and call execute works   very useful tips!

BR  Dingdang

[Oleg_L · Accepted solution]

This may be useful:

https://communities.sas.com/message/50737#50737

[Dingdang]

hi Oleg,

thanks for your answer. this is exactly what i am looking for

BR  Dingdang