I am writing a macro to help create documentation which must use ods escapechar. I need it to preserve whatever options/setting the original program used. However, setting a new escape character in the macro overwrites the original program's escape character. How can I change the escape character only for the duration of my macro?
Is there a table somewhere in SAS which stores the current ods escapechar? My thought is to assign the current value to a macro variable and use that to reassign it once my process is complete.
Use the escape sequence instead
(*ESC*)
Then you don't have to know or reset anything.
Somewhere around 9.3 (?) they added &SYSODSescapeChar:
%put &=SYSODSescapeChar ;
SYSODSESCAPECHAR=^
But since the generic (*ESC*) mentioned by data_null_ came first, I'm in the habit of using that, rather than do the save option / reset option / restore saved option dance.
Related
I am trying to reformat my variables in SAS using the put statement and a user defined format. However, I can't seem to get it to work. I want to make the value "S0001-001" convert to "S0001-002". However, when I use this code:
put("S0001-001",$format.)
it returns "S0001-001". I double-checked my format and it is mapped correctly. I import it from Excel, convert it to a SAS table, and convert the SAS table to a SAS format.
Am I misunderstanding what the put statement is supposed to be doing?
Thanks for the help.
Assuming that you tried something like this it should work as you intended.
proc format ;
value $format 'S0001-001' = 'S0001-002' ;
run;
data want ;
old= 'S0001-001';
new=put(old,$format.);
put (old new) (=:$quote.);
run;
Make sure that you do not have leading spaces or other invisible characters in either the variable value or the START value of your format. Similarly make sure that your hyphens are actual hyphens and not em-dash characters.
I am using PROC SQL.
Macro variable is STUDY --- ENTERED VALUE AS CBYM
I want output like --- 'CBYM$test'
CREATE TABLE TEST AS
SELECT OWNER, VIEW_NAME
FROM SYS.ALL_VIEWS
WHERE OWNER IN ('"&STUDY"$TEST');
It is giving error. Please help me to get proper macro variable with text in single quotes in output.
First note that SAS doesn't care if you use single or double quotes for string literals. So you could just use:
"&study$TEST"
If you are passing the code directly to a remote database that does care you could try using the %BQUOTE() macro function to allow resolution of macro variable reference inside of single quotes.
%bquote('&study$TEST')
If the macro quoting causes trouble then you can use the %UNQUOTE() macro function to remove it.
%unquote(%bquote('&study$TEST'))
Most likely a silly question, but I must be overlooking something.
I have a date field in which sometimes the date is missing (.). I have to create a file against this data set, but the requirements to have this loaded into a DB2 environment are requesting that instead of native SAS null numeric value (.), they require it to be a blank string.
This should be a simple task, by first converting the variable to character, and using the appropriate format:
LAST_ATTEMPT = PUT(ATTMPT1,YYMMDDS10.);
When a proc contents is run on the data set, it confirms that this has been converted to a character variable.
The issue is that when I look at the data set, it still has the (.) for the missing values. In an attempt to convert the missing date(.) to a blank string, it then blanks out every value for the variable...
What am I missing here?
Options MISSING=' ';
This will PUT blank for missing value when you execute your assignment.
One way is to use Options MISSING=' ';, but this might have unwanted impact on other parts of your program.
Another safer way is just adding a test to the original program:
IF ATTMPT1~=. THEN LAST_ATTEMPT = PUT(ATTMPT1,YYMMDDS10.);
ELSE LAST_ATTEMPT = "";
The SAS v9.4 documentation lists an automatic macro variable &sysodsescapechar which contains the current ODS escape character, assigned using ods escapechar=.
Whenever I try to view the macro variable using a %put statement, I get the following error:
ERROR: Open code statement recursion detected.
This happens when open code erroneously causes a macro statement to call another macro statement.
I've tried all of the following:
%put &=sysodsescapechar.;
%put %nrbquote(&sysodsescapechar.);
%put %superq(sysodsescapechar);
They all result in the same error.
When I try to view the macro variable using a data step, it appears to be empty.
data test;
esc = "&sysodsescapechar.";
put esc=;
run;
If the macro variable actually is empty, why do I get open code statement recursion errors? The %put statement on its own is valid, so putting an empty variable shouldn't be an issue.
Any guidance here would be much appreciated.
What's happening is the escape char seems to need a close parentheses. For example:
%put %superq(SYSODSESCAPECHAR););
;
It escapes the ) , which means now you have
%put superq(;);
In your first example, it's a little trickier because a semicolon by itself doesn't seem to be escaped so you have to provide a close parentheses:
%put &SYSODSESCAPECHAR.)x;
x
That works, for example. I'm not sure if it's only close paren or other things that would also allow it to stop trying to escape, but that's the only thing I can tell works.
You can look at the actual value of the macro variable in SASHELP.VMACRO; it's not ' ' (which is indeed what gets passed to the data step even with SYMGET, but it's clearly parsed). In that table it is '03'x, which looks like a uppercase L in the upper half of the character. That is the "End of Text" control character. I suspect the behavior in the editor when using this in text (in a macro variable) is simply a behavior of the editor - '03'x is not representable on many editors (if I try to paste it here, for example, it isn't displayed, but does exist as something I can backspace over with zero width). SAS is clearly capable of dealing with a 'normal' ods escapechar but isn't capable of dealing with '03'x in the same fashion.
As is known to all, SAS needs special care to quotation marks inside a sentence.
E.g.
%let quoted="I'd like to";
data temp;
set temp;
quoted=""ed";
run;
error is encounterred when submitting.
In fact I need to copy data to one dataset from another one, in which there are a lot of records containing quotation marks. When assigning, error occurrs and data step stop executing, causing rest of the code to be invalid. So in this case, it's impossible to modify original data set by adding duplicated quotation marks, which doesn't make sense.
So instead of having to add a duplicated one, like, "I''d like to", is there any other way of avoiding the error, or making data step keeping executing?
Thanks,
When using the macro language (including the %let command) you do not want to use quotes to identify text strings. To place a single quote in a string you must use one of the macro utility masking functions such as %str(). The correct syntax to place a single unmatched quote in a macro variable using %let is shown below. The % symbol before the single quote is an escape character to tell SAS that the following character (a single quote) should be used as a literal. Also note that I've removed the double quotes from the %let as they are not required.
%let quoted=%str(I%'d like to);
data temp;
quoted=""ed";
run;
Cheers
Rob
I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve in the actual situation, but in the above situation it can be solved removing the double quotation marks in the data step.
%let quoted="I'd like to";
data temp;
set temp;
quoted="ed;
run;