SAS: How to save a user-defined macro to a user-defined library

Question

I meet a problem when I use SAS macro to do some jobs.

It seems that the following code

%MACRO macro-name;
    macro-text
%MEND macro-name;

will always save the macro to the work library. I want to save it to another library, for example "mylib" which already exists.

Can anybody help me?

Answer 1

You have two options: compiled & stored, or autocall. Compiled will inherently result in faster code execution (albeit marginal) than autocall, as autocall macros need to be searched for & compiled when called for the first time in a single SAS session.

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Autocall is perhaps the easiest :

%MACRO MYMACRO ;
  /* do stuff */
%MEND ;

Save this as mymacro.sas in a given location (e.g. C:\SAS\Macros\)

Then in your code (or preferably autoexec.sas) :

filename autos "C:\SAS\Macros" ;
options append=sasautos=(autos) mrecall mautosource ;

You can then call it as usual

%MYMACRO ;

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/mcrolref/61885/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a002062214.htm

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Compiled & Stored :

libname maclib "C:\SAS\Macros" ;
options mstored sasmstore=maclib ;

%MACRO MYMACRO / store source ;
  /* do stuff */
%MEND ;

Then in your program (or again preferably, autoexec.sas)

libname maclib "C:\SAS\Macros" ;
options mstored sasmstore=maclib ;

Call it as usual

%MYMACRO ;

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/mcrolref/61885/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a001328775.htm