I have a big chunk of boilerplate code defined as a macro variable, for consistency and ease of maintenance, that gets used in several steps. For instance, (simplified for clarity),

%let boilerplate = (select id, count(*) as occurrences from id_list where age >= &startage. group by id) ;

And, when it gets used,

%macro firststuff(startage=,outfile=); proc sql; create table &outfile. as select a.*, b.occurrences from stuff a, &boilerplate. b where a.id = b.id; %mend;

%macro secondstuff(startage=,outfile=); proc sql; create table &outfile. as select a.*, b.occurrences from otherstuff a, &boilerplate. b where a.id = b.id; %mend;

etc.

so that I can run %firststuff(startage=18,outfile=stuff18); %secondstuff(startage=18,outfile=otherstuff18); %firststuff(startage=90,outfile=stuff90); %secondstuff(startage=90,outfile=otherstuff90);

etc.

Of course, what happens is that the %let gives me a warning WARNING: Apparent symbolic reference STARTAGE not resolved. since startage isn't defined yet, until the macro gets called later down; but it works OK.

It runs OK, but it would be nice to get rid of that return code = 1. Any ideas? TIA.