The important point to remember is that use of SAS macro must result in syntactically and logically correct SAS code. Your example: %let greet = Hello my name is Sam; data hello; greet = %scan("&greet",1, " "); run;   Will resolve to this SAS code: data hello; greet = hello; run; HELLO doesn't exist as a variable so GREET is set to a missing value.   Since you want to assign the value "Hello" to GREET, all you need to do is wrap your %SCAN in double quotes: data hello; greet = "%scan("&greet",1, " ")"; run;   ... View more

This worked!! I used proc append. I think I need to work on my macro logic better but what i was looking for from this query worked! Thank you so so much! ... View more

My thought process for how 'output' works was way off. Played around a bit to understand better, thanks Tom. ... View more

Great, thank you! This has mostly done the trick except it seems like for records where Component A and B are yes, a row for the overall result appears twice. I can correct this later, but is there a way to make sure it doesn't happen in this step? ... View more

/*First sort the have_contract and create a lag variable:*/   proc sort data=have_Contract; by descending version_begin_date; run; data have_contract2; set have_contract; version_lag = lag(version_begin_date); format version_lag ddmmyy10.; run;   /*Then create a Cartesian product followed by filtering for what you need:*/ proc sql; create table all1 as select a.*, b.event_date from have_contract2 a, have_event b where a.contract_number=b.contract_number order by version_begin_date; quit;   data all2; set all1; if version_lag ne . and version_begin_date=<event_date<version_lag then inc = 1; else if version_lag eq . and version_begin_date=<event_date then inc =1; if inc=1; drop version_lag inc; run; proc sort data=all2; by contract_number contract_version version_begin_date event_date;   ... View more

Since SELECT in PROC COPY accepts a list of dataset, you are better off doing it like this proc sql noprint; select dataset into :dsnames separated by " " from ds22; quit; proc copy in= f_ out=o_ ; select &dsnames.; run; ... View more

thanks @ballardw I was fixing a lengthy existing program where I came across using input function throughout the program in this way and noticed the conversion and that the values did not look right. I am assuming it was used to display it in 4.1 format using input function and numeric to numeric conversion. But I was not clear as why it did not work. Now, I get it. It was looking for a character value and thus, the automatic conversion occurred. ... View more