Date:         Wed, 3 Dec 2008 07:05:49 -0800
Reply-To:     GuyA <guya.carpenter@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         GuyA <guya.carpenter@GMAIL.COM>
Organization: http://groups.google.com
Subject:      Re: avoid making macro just to use %if,
Comments: To: sas-l@uga.edu
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

I was thinking about this recently, with the difficulty I was having
in making a conditional SET statement. The best thing I could come up
with without a superfluous "macro wrapper" was the following:

/* Conditionally set dataset: */

data second;
   var='second';
run;

data _null_;
   if %qsysfunc(exist(first)) then call symputx('set','first');
   else call symputx('set','second');
run;
%put set=&set;

data output;
   set &set;
run;