Pat the following throws a warning but will get you what you want I think:

%let ay = 2001-2002;

%let ay2 = %sysfunc(compress(%substr(&ay,1,(%eval(%index(&ay,-)-1)))_ %substr(&ay,%eval(%index(&ay,-)+1),%length(&ay))));

%put &ay2;

HTH Toby Dunn

-----Original Message----- From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Pat Moore Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 2:44 PM To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Change text in a macro variable

SAS Gurus,

I have a variable called ay which looks like this: 2001-2002. I want to use it as part of a filename, so I need to get rid of the hyphen or (preferably) replace the hyphen with an underline. I'm doing this in a macro, so I need a step that does something like this:

data &c&cno&(translate(&ay,'-','_')); set etc...

So that the macro creates a filename like:

data ART1022001_2002;

How does one accomplish this feat?

Pat Moore