While you can certainly attack this by doubling quotes, using quoting functions, and such, let me point out a couple things in the interests of simplicity:

1) Under Windows at least, the quotes around the operating system command are NOT required (according to SAS 8 and 9 OnlineDoc, verified for 8.2). So, you can simply use X START "&XLSFILE";

2) If you're worried that the above might be platform-dependent (since it's documented in the Windows companion rather than the general language reference manual), use %SYSEXEC instead of X. This works in open code as well as within macro: %SYSEXEC START "&XLSFILE";

As others have noted, the START may be superfluous here, but the same principle should apply for other commands such as DIR (presumably to a file) or DELETE.

Mike Rhoads Westat RhoadsM1@Westat.com

-----Original Message----- From: Mark Brinkley [mailto:nospam@ABC.COM] Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 8:24 PM To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Macro variables and X command

I use a macro variable to identify the name of the Excel file. For example,

%LET XLSFILE = c:\myfile.xls;

I use the following command to start Excel from within SAS:

X "START &XLSFILE";

As is, these statements work fine.

I would like to modify the xls filename to include spaces, like so:

%LET XLSFILE = c:\my file.xls;

But now X "START &XLSFILE"; doesn't work.

Any ideas on how to get this to work? I've tried quotes around my macro variable but this doesn't work. I'm running Win2000 and sas 8.2

Thanks.