The code does work properly after I restart SAS. Sorry for the confusion. I have no idea why it didn't work before. Somehow SAS acts weird after I canceling submissions. Here are the error messages I got when that happens.   1732 %MACRO test(); 1733 data dsTest; 1734 %let var1 = varName1; 1735 %let var2 = varName2; 1736 %do i=1 %to 2; 1737 &&var&i = &i; 1738 %end; 1739 run; 1740 %MEND test; 1741 %test; MPRINT(TEST): data dsTest; WARNING: Apparent symbolic reference VAR not resolved. NOTE: Line generated by the invoked macro "TEST". 3 &&var&i = &i; - 180 MPRINT(TEST): &&var1 = 1; WARNING: Apparent symbolic reference VAR not resolved. NOTE: Line generated by the invoked macro "TEST". 5 &&var&i = &i; - 180 MPRINT(TEST): &&var2 = 2; MPRINT(TEST): run; ERROR 180-322: Statement is not valid or it is used out of proper order. NOTE: The SAS System stopped processing this step because of errors. WARNING: The data set WORK.DSTEST may be incomplete. When this step was stopped there were 0 observations and 0 variables. WARNING: Data set WORK.DSTEST was not replaced because this step was stopped.   I guess SAS is trying to finish the canceled statements and mixing them with the current statements. Do you know how to tell SAS to "forget" the unfinished execution? ... View more

Thanks for your reply. What I actually need is to call macro variable var1 and var2 such that var1=1 becomes varName1=1 Is there a way to achieve that? Thank you. ... View more

Thanks for your reply. As far as I know, symget() is usually applied to the right-hand side of "=". I've tried data dsTest; do i=1 to 2; symget(cats('var',i)) = i; end; run; but it didn't work. Could you show me explicitly how to make symget() work in this situation? Thank you so much. ... View more

Thanks for your reply. The code doesn't seem to work. Is there a typo or any further modification required? ... View more

Hi KurtBremser,   Thanks for your reply. I've tried the following modification but it still doesn't work.   data dsTest;     array varArray (2) var1-var2;     do i=1 to 2;         &array(i) = i;     end; run;   Could you please show me an example? Thank you so much. ... View more

Thanks for your response. Is it possible to use keep statement just once? Suppose I have a list of datasets name stored in a macro variable (e.g. the "name" column in sashelp.vcolumn) such that  %put dsList; returns  dsName1 dsName2 dsName3 ...   Is there a way to merges all the datasets in dsList by calling macro variable &dsList. (i.e. without actually typing the name of each dataset) while applying the same keep statement to each of them? It would be great if I can do   data dsout;     merge &dsList. (keep=var1 var2 var3);     by var1; run;   but it is not valid. ... View more

Hi   Here are the steps:   1. Sort the data by id and yyyymm proc sort data = play;     by id yyyymm; run;   2. Extract the rows containing 'A' in either class1 or class2 data playClassA;     set play;     if substr(class1,1,1)='A' | substr(class2,1,1)='A'; run;   3. Get the first record data dsOut1;     set playClassA;     by id;     if first.id then output; run;   4. Extract the ids containing no 'A' in either class1 or class2 data playClassABar;     merge play         dsOut1 (in=a keep=id);     by id; run;   5. Get the last record data dsOut2;     set playClassA;     by id;     if last.id then output; run;   6. Combine the results data dsOut;     set dsOut1 dsOut2; run;   Hope this will help. ... View more