Date:         Fri, 13 Dec 2002 15:53:18 -0600
Reply-To:     Sterling Price <Sterling.Price@WAL-MART.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Sterling Price <Sterling.Price@WAL-MART.COM>
Subject:      resolve macro variable containing & sign?
Comments: cc: Beth Pautsch <Beth.Pautsch@wal-mart.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Greetings,

How can I resolve a macro variable that contains & as one of the characters
in the string assigned to it?

Example:

The file IN1 contains a character string that looks like:
.&c¢V+Fé].-.ßL&ÿñj(ö*èî¿<Î.

(these are actually Chinese DBCS characters in case you are wondering)

In the data step below, as soon as the first reference to &STRING1 is made,
the program abends with the error shown:

DATA _NULL_;

  INFILE IN1;
  INPUT @001 STRING1  $80.;
  PUT STRING1=;

  CALL SYMPUT('STRING1',STRING1);

RUN;

%PUT &STRING1;

ERROR: Symbolic variable name C¢V must contain only letters, digits, and
underscores.

So, it's apparent that SAS is trying to resolve &c¢V as a macro variable.

I have tried it with and without the DBCS/DBCSLANG=CHINESE system options
and gotten the same result.

Is there a way to resolve &STRING1 and not attempt to resolve &c¢V ?

Also, this problem became apparent when converting a SAS 6.09 program to SAS
8.2.  The SAS 6.09 version seemingly does not behave the same way - it
generates a warning, but that's all.  The value in &STRING1 is resolved (I
know there are missing characters but I believe this is a limitation of the
SDSF output viewer, where I copied these results from).

WARNING: Apparent symbolic reference C not resolved.
13
14         %PUT &STRING1;
&c¢V+F  - L&  j(ö*   <

Is there some system option that controls this behavior that might have been
set differently in v6.09 than it is is v8.2?

Thanks everyone,

Sterling Price





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