programming within proc cas

[acordes]

I'm creating my own cas actions, and the result is as expected except that the loc function sometimes returns -1 despite the stripped value should be found in the stripped lookup table.

I've created a simplified version of my challenge leaving only the cas actions result part with the loc functionality.  

Here is the link to the documentation. https://documentation.sas.com/doc/en/pgmsascdc/v_062/proccas/p01s21os7idn2ln1aaefthmtjqru.htm 

%let namer=ts;
%let namer2=a123456789b123456789c123456789;
%let namer3=a123456789b123456789c123456789d1;

data casuser.cars;
set sashelp.cars;
format &namer &namer2 datetime20. ;
&namer=intnx('dtminutes', datetime(), rand('integer', -1000, 0));
&namer2=&namer;
&namer3=put(rand('uniform', 0, 1), best12.);
run;

%let casy=cars;
%let liby=casuser;


cas mySession sessopts=(caslib="&liby");

ods escapechar='^';
proc cas;

	table.columninfo result=r /table="&casy";
      	columns = '';
		search_cols='';
      	do i = 1 to r.columninfo.nrows;
			if index(UPCASE(r['columninfo'][i,7]), 'DATETIME')  THEN do;
         		symput('col', ifc(prxmatch('m/\s/i',r[1,i].column), '''||r[1,i].column||''n', r[1,i].column));
         		columns = columns||' '||symget('col');
         		search_cols = strip(search_cols||'|'||symget('col'));
			end;
      end;
      	symput('ok_list', substrn(search_cols,2,length(search_cols)-1));
      	symput('varlist', substrn(columns,2,length(columns)-1));

		print "&ok_list.";
run;

   simple.summary result=sumres / 
      subset={'min', 'max'},
		table="&casy";

	sumlist=findtable(sumres);

do k=1 to dim(sumres.summary);
		print quote(sumres.summary[k, 1]);
end;

    simple.distinct result=dist /
        table="&casy";

do l=1 to dim(dist.distinct);
		print quote(dist.distinct[l, 1]);
end;

run;

	do i=1 to dim(dist.distinct);
			if prxmatch(cats('m/\b', symget('ok_list'), '\b/i'), strip(dist.distinct[i, 1]))  then do;
					help=strip(dist.distinct[i, 1]);
						print quote(help);
					j=loc(sumlist, 'column', help);
			if j<1 then do;
						help=dist.distinct[i, 1];
							print quote(help);
						j=loc(sumlist, 'column', help);
			end;
						print j;
		end;

	end;
run;

And the log shows the problem:

The loc function does not return a value for the variable 'ts'n because the distinct action returns a wider width for the column name than the summary action. 

@BrunoMueller to the rescue 🙂

[acordes]

I've solved it by adding a fake numeric variable whose name has length 32. 

this ensures the loc function working properly.