Date:         Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:04:07 -0700
Reply-To:     Jon K Peck <peck@us.ibm.com>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Jon K Peck <peck@us.ibm.com>
Subject:      Re: SPSS Macro Variables
Comments: To: Richard Ristow <wrristow@mindspring.com>
In-Reply-To:  <7.0.1.0.2.20091117154431.03607738@mindspring.com>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

See below.
Jon Peck
SPSS, an IBM Company
peck@us.ibm.com
312-651-3435



From:
Richard Ristow <wrristow@mindspring.com>
To:
SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Date:
11/17/2009 01:57 PM
Subject:
Re: [SPSSX-L] SPSS Macro Variables
Sent by:
"SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>



At 03:21 PM 11/16/2009, Michael W. Bates wrote:

>I'm a 10 year SAS user who's fairly new to SPSS.  I and importing 5
>excel files with dates in the filename, and would like to be able to
>change the date once in my code and import all 5 files.
>
>define !import1 () 'D:\Reports\Daily\Production File 1 Nov 16 2009.xls' !
>enddefine.
>
>I would like to the 'Nov 16' once and concatenate that with the rest
>of the macro variables, so I don't have to make 5 changes.  SPSS
>doesn't seem to like it when I try to define a separate macro
>variable for the 'Nov 16'.

OK, here's the shock for SAS macro users:
a) You can't create or assign a value to a macro variable except within a
macro
b) Macro variables do not persist after the macro they belong to.
They are not available in another macro.

>>> But you can use the !EVAL function to evaluate a macro within a macro.
 That might solve the problem here.

The standard SPSS solution is to make the date string an argument to
the macro. I'd love to work that out, and may in a bit, but I'm both
rusty and pressed for time.

>>> But a better solution is to use Python programmability, which is much
more powerful and flexible and has none of these problems.


Regards,
Jon Peck

-Best of luck,
  Richard

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