For what it's worth, and because it might help someone else Googling this same error, I have a problem with long labels in some generated code. The code runs just fine until the program file is %included. Then I get this error same error. The generated labels are clearly longer than the allowed 256 characters, but SAS seems to deal with it ok by simply truncating the labels, until the file is %included when at some point it just gives up and never finishes executing the data step.
... View more