On Wed, 5 May 2004 03:26:51 -0400, Mayukh Dass <dass@UGA.EDU> wrote:

>Thanks a lot. My idea on macro was not clear, but I was able to fix it. >I have another question. When do we use %if %then in a macro? >Thanks. >Mayukh

Mayukh,

In your original example, you always want to generate the code if flag in ('1', '2'...etc., because it's part of the data step work you want to do on every iteration of the macro. Therefore, a %if (macro conditional) is not appropriate.

Use %if %then within a macro to decide whether or not to produce SAS code. Suppose your code was intended to make the work.one dataset have output based on a different value of the flag variable. In that case, you could do a %if (macro conditional) to select the if (non-macro) statement to include in each iteration of the code.

I find it useful to think of the macro facility as an assistant SAS programmer - I tell it which code it should write.

HTH, Steve Raimi