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sqlsassas-macrolet

Is there a way to edit values in list after %let in SAS

I created a macro variable: %let hi = ('g', 'c', 'v', 'd'); I want to put this list in code but need to add %% for each value, looks like this('%g%', '%c%', '%v%', '%d%'). is there a way i can get the result?

I want to have %% because I want to use LIKE in sql.

Solution

  • The most straight forward way would be loop over the items in the list and build a new list. Dealing with % and commas is a pain in macro code. So perhaps it would be a lot easier to just do it in a data step.

    Example;

    %let list=('a','b','c');
data _null_;
  length old new word $1000 ;
  old=symget('list');
  do i=1 to countw(old,'( ,)','q');
     word=quote(cats('%',dequote(scan(old,i,'( ,)','q')),'%'),"'");
     new=catx(',',new,word);
  end;
  call symputx('newlist',cats('(',new,')'));
run;
%put &newlist;

    Result

    379  %put &newlist;
('%a%','%b%','%c%')

    Note that a macro variable can be longer than a character variable in a data step. The maximum length in a variable is 32K (32,767) versus 64K for a macro variable.