Passing special characters (ampersand, hyphen) in a SAS macro call

Question

I am using a SAS macro to execute a function whereby one of the input parameters is from a SAS data table and the second parameter (date) is hardcoded, like this-

data _null_;
  set RTick.Co_list;
  call execute('%trade_participation(01012013,'|| scrip10 ||');');
run ;

The macro looks as follows-

%macro trade_participation(date,scrip10);

data Trade_data (drop = time Record_ind segment series trade_no symbol trd_prc trd_q trade_time
buy_order_no buy_client_flg buy_algo_ind sell_order_no sell_client_flg sell_algo_ind);
    set Rttrade.Cash_trades_&date;

    if symbol = "&scrip10"; 
    if Record_ind = "RM";
    if segment = "CASH";
    if series = "EQ";
    time = trade_time/65536;
    time = time/3600;
    timeseqno = int((time-9)*60)+1;
    if timeseqno > 15;      
    if (buy_client_flg = 2)&((buy_algo_ind = 0)|(buy_algo_ind = 2)) = 1 then buy_HFT = 1;
    if (sell_client_flg = 2)&((sell_algo_ind = 0)|(sell_algo_ind = 2)) = 1 then sell_HFT = 1;
    trade_val = trd_prc*trd_q/100;
run;

/* more SAS code to do a bunch of other tasks to do on the subsetted 
file Trade_data */

%mend;

The problem I am facing right now is that some of the input values in the Co_list file (scrip10 variable) have special characters, such as 'bbbbbbM&M' or 'BAJAJ-AUTO'. As soon as these pass through the macro, it fails - 'Apparent symbolic reference M not resolved.' (for the first example -bbbbbbM&M')

Can anyone suggest a workaround?

Answer 1

In your particular case why not just include the actual quotes into the macro parameter value instead of adding them in the macro?

So change the macro definition:

if symbol = &scrip10 ; 

Then in the code generation step add the quotes. Use single quotes and any & or % characters will be ignored by the macro processor.

call execute(cats('%nrstr(%trade_participation)(01012013,',quote(scrip10,"'"),')'));

Wrapping the macro invocation, %trade_participation, inside of the %nrstr() macro function will make your SAS log a lot easier to read. Example:

+     %trade_participation(01012013,'bbbbbbM&M')
+     %trade_participation(01012013,'BAJAJ-AUTO')