CODEWITHSUNDEEP
sas
Therkel
Therkel

Reputation: 1438

Masking ampersands in output of a sysget call

To get the file name of the current SAS program we can write

%put %sysget(SAS_EXECFILEPATH);

I am so unfortunate that someone once created a directory that included an ampersand in the path (yikes!). Let us create an example folder C:\temp&other and store our test.sas program here in that folder.

Now, my question is:

Is it possible to mask the output of %sysget(SAS_EXECFILEPATH) to avoid SAS trying to resolve a macro variable &other?

The easy solution would be to change the path name but things are unfortunately not always easy and I am not allowed to change the folder name.

My attempts: None of the nr functions I have tried help me, since they mask both % and &. I have tried the following (indented line is the SAS log output). Note that %NRQUOTE outputs the same as the "naked" call.

%put %sysget(SAS_EXECFILEPATH); 
    /* WARNING: Apparent symbolic reference OTHER not resolved. */
    /* C:\temp&other\test.sas */

%put %nrstr(%sysget(SAS_EXECFILEPATH));
    /* %nrstr(%sysget(SAS_EXECFILEPATH)) */

%put %nrquote(%sysget(SAS_EXECFILEPATH));
    /* WARNING: Apparent symbolic reference OTHER not resolved. */
    /* C:\temp&other\test.sas */

%put %superq(%sysget(SAS_EXECFILEPATH));
    /* WARNING: Apparent symbolic reference OTHER not resolved.*/
    /* ERROR: Invalid symbolic variable name C\TEST&OTHER\TEST.SAS. */

Upvotes: 2

Views: 351

Answers (2)

Tom
Tom

Reputation: 51601

To eliminate the warning about the undefined macro variable (and worse the possibility of it actually finding and using an existing macro variable) you will need to use the SAS function SYSGET() instead of the macro function %SYSGET().

If you cannot run SAS code then you can use the macro function %QSYSFUNC() to run the SAS function and quote the returned value.

%put %qsysfunc(sysget(SAS_EXECFILEPATH));

If might even be useful to define a macro "function" %qsysget() in your personal autocall library. Perhaps something like this:

%macro qsysget(name);
  %if -1=%sysfunc(envlen(&name)) %then %put WARNING: Environment variable "&name" not found.;
  %else %qsysfunc(sysget(&name));
%mend;

Upvotes: 4

Stu Sztukowski
Stu Sztukowski

Reputation: 12909

Use a data _null_ step with call symputx to create a macro variable that holds the value of sas_execfilepath. You can then resolve it with %superq().

data _null_;
    call symputx('sas_execfilepath', sysget('sas_execfilepath'));
run;

%put %superq(sas_execfilepath);

Log output:

C:\temp&other\test.sas

Upvotes: 5

Related Questions