Max, What happens is this: as you placed the macro call before the RUN statement in the datastep, the macro gets executed before the datastep. So, the parameter &value has whatever was assigned to it before the datastep, not the SYMPUT-ed value.

Likewise, in %bquote(trim(varname)) the %BQUOTE has no effect, what gets %BQUOTE-d is the text "trim(varname)".

I think that what you want to accomplish can be done by %macro checkvarname(value); %let valid=%sysfunc(nvalid(&value,v7)); %if &valid=0 %then %do; %let position=%sysfunc(notname(&value)); %put ***The first invalid character of %upcase(&value) is in position:; %put &position; %end; %else %put ***%upcase(&value) is a valid variable name.; %put; %put; %mend checkvarname;

data _null_; length varname $ 39; input varname $ 1-39; *the purpose of using %bquote is to preserve blanks at the beginning of literals; call execute(catt('%checkvarname(%str(',varname,'))')); cards; valid_name valid_name invalid name book_sales_results_for_past_five_years! ;run;

I also changed "valid" to "&valid" in the macro.

There is a potential problem with your macro, though: side effects. As the macro variables VALID and POSITION are not declared %LOCAL, they will overwrite macro variables of the same name defined in the calling environment (if defined there). This can be remedied by using %LOCAL, or by dispensing of the variables, which are only used once, anyway: %macro checkvarname(value); %if %sysfunc(nvalid(&value,v7))=0 %then %do; %put ***The first invalid character of %upcase(&value) is in position:; %put %sysfunc(notname(&value)); %end; %else %put ***%upcase(&value) is a valid variable name.; %put; %put; %mend checkvarname;

Regards, Søren

On Thu, 8 Dec 2011 23:58:49 -0500, bbser 2009 <bbser2009@GMAIL.COM> wrote:

>Greetings! > >The code below is suppose to check if a given literal can be used as a >variable name. >I would like to check the four literals one at a time in the data step. >Only the first two are suppose to be valid. >But after running the code, I only got one comment in the log about the last >long literal (39 characters long), which said the literal is valid, >apparently contrary to the name criterion. >What am I missing here? In addition, do you think I am using %bquote >correctly? >Please help. Thank you very much in advance! > >Regards, Max >(Maaxx) > >%macro checkvarname(value); >%let valid=%sysfunc(nvalid(&value,v7)); >%if valid=0 %then > %do; > %let position=%sysfunc(notname(&value)); > %put ***The first invalid character of %upcase(&value) is in position:; > %put &position; > %end; >%else > %put ***%upcase(&value) is a valid variable name.; > %put; > %put; >%mend checkvarname; > >data _null_; >length varname $ 39; >input varname $ 1-39; >*the purpose of using %bquote is to preserve blanks at the beginning of >literals; >call symput('value',%bquote(trim(varname))); >%checkvarname(&value) >cards; >valid_name > valid_name >invalid name >book_sales_results_for_past_five_years! >;