SAS^® Macro Language

Duration: 2 days

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Description

This two-day course is for SAS programmers who wish to write more dynamic and sophisticated SAS programs with low maintenance overheads. The course focuses on the components of the macro facility and how the macro language affects the normal processing of SAS programs with low maintenance overheads.

It focuses on the components of the macro facility and how the macro language affects normal processing of SAS programs. An emphasis is placed on designing macro systems and debugging techniques.

Objectives

After attending this course you will be able to:

• describe how macro processing takes place
• understand the differences between macros created at compilation and execution time
• create user-defined macro variables
• use automatic and user-defined macro variables
• write macros that make common programming tasks easier
• define and use macro programs
• write more dynamic and reduced maintenance production programs
• debug programs that contain macro coding

Prerequisite Skills

No prior knowledge of the SAS^® Macro language is required. However, to receive maximum benefit from the course you should have an understanding of the SAS language at the level presented in the SAS^® Programming: Data Manipulation Techniques course.

Specifically you should be able to:

• write and submit SAS programs on your operating system
• use LIBNAME, FILENAME, TITLE and OPTIONS statements
• use a DATA step to read from or write to a SAS data set or an external data file
• use DATA step programming statements such as IF-THEN/ELSE, DO WHILE, DO UNTIL and iterative DO
• use character functions such as SUBSTR, SCAN, INDEX and UPCASE
• use the LENGTH and RETAIN statements
• use SAS data set options such as DROP=, KEEP= and OBS=
• form subsets of data using the WHERE clause
• create and use SAS date values including SAS date constants
• execute base SAS procedures such as SORT, PRINT, CONTENTS, MEANS, FREQ, TABULATE and CHART

SAS^® System Modules used

This course covers Version 9 of Base SAS^®.

Course Topics

Introduction

• Purpose of the Macro Facility
• Program Flow
• Course Data

Macro Variables

• Introduction to Macro Variables
• Automatic Macro Variables
• Macro Variable References
• User-Defined Macro Variables
• Delimiting Macro Variables Names
• Macro Functions

Macro Definitions

• Defining and Calling a Macro
• Macro Parameters

Data Step and SQL Interfaces

• Creating Macro Variables in the DATA Step
• Indirect References to Macro Variables
• Retrieving Macro Variable in the DATA Step (Self-Study)
• Creating Macro Variables in SQL

Macro Programs

• Conditional Processing
• Iterative Processing
• Global and Local Symbol Tables

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