Andrea,

You %QUPCASE() preserves macro quoting (a misnomer, I believe) but you only want to preserve quotation marks. Quotation marks are never removed.

The problem is in the term MACRO QUOTING. What SAS calls macro quoting is really character masking. It has nothing to do with quotation marks, in general. Instead, it is used to keep the macro processor from misinterpreting some characters like commas, semicolons, left and right parentheses, and maybe ampersands and dollar signs.

Ed

Edward Heaton, SAS Senior Systems Analyst, Westat (An Employee-Owned Research Corporation), 1600 Research Boulevard, RW-4541, Rockville, MD 20850-3195 Voice: (301) 610-4818 Fax: (301) 294-3879 mailto:EdHeaton@Westat.com http://www.Westat.com

-----Original Message----- From: owner-sas-l@listserv.uga.edu [mailto:owner-sas-l@listserv.uga.edu] On Behalf Of Wainwright, Andrea Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 5:31 PM To: SAS-L@listserv.uga.edu Subject: RE: I need a macro maven STAT!!!

OK, I got it to work, but I'd still love to hear why this works, and %qupcase didn't:

%macro var_list (exclude=); proc sql noprint ; select name into : Depvars separated by " " from dictionary.columns where libname = "WORK" and memname = "ABCDE" and upcase(name) not in ('A' 'B') ;

select name into : Depvars separated by " " from dictionary.columns where libname = "WORK" and memname = "ABCDE" and upcase(name) not in (%sysfunc(upcase(&exclude))) ;/*sysfunc works better*/ quit ; %mend;

-----Original Message----- From: Wainwright, Andrea Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 5:16 PM To: 'SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU' Subject: I need a macro maven STAT!!!

OK, I have a simple macro:

%macro var_list (exclude=); proc sql noprint ; select name into : Depvars separated by " " from dictionary.columns where libname = "WORK" and memname = "ABCDE" and upcase(name) not in (&exclude) ; quit ; %mend;

%var_list(exclude='A' 'B') %put model a = &DepVars ; %put model b = &DepVars ;

Works fine.

But, I can't be sure that people are going to upcase the exclude list.

So I thought I should do: %macro var_list (exclude=); proc sql noprint ; select name into : Depvars separated by " " from dictionary.columns where libname = "WORK" and memname = "ABCDE" and upcase(name) not in (%qupcase(&exclude)) ;/*added qupcase here to preserve single quotes*/ quit ; %mend;

But then my log shows: MPRINT(VAR_LIST): proc sql noprint ; SYMBOLGEN: Macro variable EXCLUDE resolves to 'A' 'B' NOTE: Line generated by the macro function "QUPCASE". 2 'A' 'B' - 22 - 202 MPRINT(VAR_LIST): select name into : Depvars separated by " " from dictionary.columns where libname = "WORK" and memname = "ABCDE" and upcase(name) not in ('A' 'B') ; ERROR 22-322: Syntax error, expecting one of the following: a quoted string, a numeric constant, a datetime constant, a missing value, (, -, SELECT.

ERROR 202-322: The option or parameter is not recognized and will be ignored.

MPRINT(VAR_LIST): quit ;

Of course the select statement it generates is perfect. I can cut and paste it into the editor window and run it just fine.

So what am I missing here?

(PC SAS v 9.1 if it helps)

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