Brian,

There would be a very good reason not to use a semi-colon in a macro call, but as it turns out most of the time I do use a semicolon it is redundant. But by using a semicolon the code looks cleaner!

For example, here I use macros to generate the SAS data set names and keep statements- a semicolon would be fatal in %BKO! The semi after %DS is the semi to end the SAS data statement (because there is no semi-colon generated from within the macro.)

DATA %BKO %DS ;

resolves to:

DATA sas1.data (keep= client amount sales) sas2.data (keep=branch clientnam sales returns) ;

Hope this helps!

-Nancy g GE Capital ________________________________ GE Capital Card Services Nancy K. Patton Senior Risk Analyst RISK MANAGEMENT GROUP General Electric Capital Corporation 805 S. Courthouse Road, Arlington, VA 22204-2104 <mailto:Nancy.Patton@GECAPITAL.COM>

-----Original Message----- From: Brian Rosson [mailto:brosson@VOYAGER.NET] Sent: Wednesday, January 27, 1999 8:19 PM To: SAS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU Subject: Semicolon to end a macro call?

When calling a macro I thought it was proper SAS code to not use a semicolon. When reading SAS Macro Tips and Techniques, about 50% of the time the programmer used a semicolon to end a macro call. Example:

%macro test;

....<code here>...

%mend test;

%test <no semicolon>

%test; <semicolon>

These contributions to this book were from SUGI 14 through 18 so I assume (maybe mistakenly) that these programmers know what they're talking about and would not use sloppy or incorrect code. What would be the reason for use a semicolon after a macro call? Any comments, thoughts or suggestions are welcome.

Thank you,

Brian Rosson Parke-Davis Pharmaceutical Research Ann Arbor, Michigan