SAS Macro variable resolve issue in datastep

Question

There are similar named macro variables like temp1,temp2 etc..

temp1=xyz; temp2=abc;

Now I want to store these macro variable values into dataset.

I tried writing something as below:

%let n=2;
data current_data;
do=1 to &n.;
myvalues="&&temp&i.";
run;

But its not working. It seems that i is not getting resolved in the same dataset as it is declared in just like call symput function does.

Can anyone help?

What is your desired result here? Do you want an observation for each macro variable? — draycut
Why did you put the data into macro variables in the first place? Hard to see how you could get a series of macro variables like that without starting with a dataset. Why not just use the original dataset? — Tom
@Tom : These are the input from the prompt of stored procedure. I give user an option to enter multivalued text, so they enter n number of values, each becomes macro variable of similar name, so I need to read those and put it into dataset. Hope my question is clear to you now — vaibhav mehta

Tom Tom · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-31T15:31:41

To dynamically retrieve the value of a macro variable at run time in a data step use symget() function, the reverse of the call symputx() function. You can use cats() to help you build the macro variable name from your integer value.

data current_data;
  do=1 to &n.;
    length myvalues $200;
    myvalues=symget(cats('temp',i));
    output;
  end;
run;

You could use macro logic to generate some wallpaper code. Note that you must define a macro to use %DO loop.

%macro expand;
   data current_data;
     length i 8 myvalues $200;
  %do i=1 %to &n;
     i=&i;
     myvalues="&&temp&i";
     output;
  %end;
   run;
%mend expand;
%expand;

SAS Macro variable resolve issue in datastep

1 Answers