Joe,

I have to disagree! Not with your explanation, but with respect to the ultimate cost of such fixes.

SAS accepts all kinds of errors, such as numerous misspellings of proc names and the previous example of code that doesn't conform to the documentation.

If all of those incorrect examples all of the sudden produced errors, many of us might end up with incorrect results on existing production code, and never even know about it.

I think that the same thing holds true with the proc import issue and others like the ones that Jim pointed out. As for importing Excel, I think it would have been quite easy for SAS9.2 on 64 bit machines to have coded in a check of the file to determine what version of Excel it actually was trying to read and let the program apply the correct engine.

Similarly, I think code could have been written that simply converted pre Excel 2007 names to use the xls engine. Again, without having done so, it serves to introduce error that could have (IMHO) been avoided.

Art

On Fri, 14 Jan 2011 09:19:55 -0600, Joe Matise <snoopy369@GMAIL.COM> wrote:

>The PROC IMPORT issue is a microsoft issue, not a SAS issue, as far as I >understand (MS doesn't support .xls's JET engine on win7-64) > >I'd say this is more of a bugfix than anything else; %else %then should not >work, and probably was an oversight that was corrected in 9.2. > >-Joe > >On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 9:10 AM, Arthur Tabachneck <art297@rogers.com>wrote: > >> Toby, Chris and everyone who responded offline, thanks and very much >> appreciated! >> >> On 9.2 the same code produces: >> >> ERROR: There is no matching %IF statement for the %THEN. A dummy macro will >> be compiled. >> 214 %let x="F"; >> 215 %end; >> 216 %mend test; >> 217 %test ('B') >> - >> 180 >> WARNING: Apparent invocation of macro TEST not resolved. >> ERROR 180-322: Statement is not valid or it is used out of proper order. >> >> While I agree that error checking is important, I thought that SAS always >> ensured that previous code would continue to work. This is the second such >> discrepancy with that rule I've seen this week. Proc import using Excel as >> the DBMS on 64 bit systems was the other. >> >> Art >> -------- >> On Fri, 14 Jan 2011 10:02:18 -0500, Chris Brooks <Chris.Brooks@ONS.GOV.UK> >> wrote: >> >> >Art >> > >> >This code runs on 9.1.3 SP4 - no errors, notes or warnings and outputs "F" >> >to the log. >> > >> >Chris Brooks >> >Office for National Statistics >> >United Kingdom >> > >> >On Fri, 14 Jan 2011 09:51:21 -0500, Arthur Tabachneck <art297@ROGERS.COM> >> >wrote: >> > >> >>If I correctly understood the discussion, a couple of our list's members >> >>suggested that code, like the following, would work with 9.1 and earlier, >> >>but not with 9.2. Does it work with 9.1 and/or earlier versions? >> >> >> >>%global x; >> >>%macro test (something); >> >> %if &something. eq 'A' %then %do; >> >> data want; >> >> set sashelp.class (where=(sex eq 'M')); >> >> %let x="M"; >> >> run; >> >> %end; >> >> %else %then %do; >> >> %let x="F"; >> >> %end; >> >>%mend test; >> >>%test ('B') >> >>%put &x.; >> >> >> >>Thanks in advance, >> >>Art >>