Date:         Tue, 22 Oct 2002 11:25:39 -0400
Reply-To:     "John J Genzano, III" <jgenzano@GENZANO.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "John J Genzano, III" <jgenzano@GENZANO.COM>
Subject:      Re: Macro variable in Macro Name
In-Reply-To:  <001f01c279dd$648ada70$6401a8c0@cx177980b>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Your problem is not because of the variable name. There is a semi-colon
missing somewhere in the code.



John J Genzano, III
Principal Consultant
Genzano Software Consulting
610-212-6111
609-822-0211
SAS Certified Professional, V6



"Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he
is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not
make messes in the house." -  Robert A. Heinlein




-----Original Message-----
From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Bill Anderson
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 11:12 AM
To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Macro variable in Macro Name


I would like to be able to name a macro, according to the value of a
macro variable that is defined before the macro code.  Here is a very
abbreviated version of the code I tried.

%let suffix = ABC;

%macro that&suffix;

/* SAS code; */

%mend;



The intention is the the compiled macro would have the name thatABC, and
then the statement   %thatABC   would invoke the macro.  But the SAS
macro compiler balks, and the log contains the messages:

ERROR: Expected semicolon not found. The macro will not be compiled.

ERROR: A dummy macro will be compiled.



According to the SAS MACRO manual (version 8, page 23), "You can use
these [macro variable] references anywhere in a SAS program".  I have
learned to take this statement with a grain of salt, and the above
situation seems to be another example.  Any suggestions would be
appreciated.

One might wonder why I would want to do such a thing.  The reason is
that I have a bunch of files which perform the same  logical operation,
although the specific macro code is quite different from file to file.
(Actually about 10 different algorithms for data imputation, and I want
details of the specific algorithm to remain hidden in the individual
files.)  I want to preserve as much parallelism as possible, and I
successfully use the suffix in titles, variable labels, SAS data set
names, and external file names.  I would like to to be able to do the
same thing with the macro names, but have come to the above described
sticky point.