SAS Passing Multiple User Input Values to Macro Variable

July 24, 2023

I am using SAS Web Report Viewer where I have an interface from which end users can select the multiple values as an input to a macro variable. However, when I check the SAS Logs I see that only the first input value is passed on to the macro variable. How can I get all the values passed on to the macro variable? (And if possible separate the values using ‘|’ as a delimiter). For example here I am trying to pass ‘Discount_Logility’ and ‘Discount_EDD’ as the inputs to the variable ‘list_string’ (I want the variable to dynamically take in more inputs depending on how many the user passes).

%put &list_string;

Here is the SAS Log

>>> SAS Macro Variables:

 LIST_STRING=Discount_Logility
 LIST_STRING0=2
 LIST_STRING1=Discount_Logility
 LIST_STRING2=Discount_EDD
 LIST_STRING_COUNT=2

But here we can see that the macro variable ‘list_string’ takes only the first input, ‘Discount_Logility’

21        +%put &list_string;
Discount_Logility

How can value of ‘list_string’ variable be list_string = Discount_Logility | Discount_EDD OR whatever be the best way to pass in the multiple inputs to the list_string variable.

>Solution :

SAS passes each one into its own macro variable. Note these three entries in the log:

LIST_STRING1=Discount_Logility
LIST_STRING2=Discount_EDD
LIST_STRING_COUNT=2

You can use LIST_STRING_COUNT and iterate over all the selections.

%macro convert_to_list;
    %global list_string;
  
    %let list_string = &list_string1;

    %do i = 2 %to &list_string_count.;
        %let list_string = &list_string.|&&list_string&i.;
    %end;
%mend;

%convert_to_list;

%put &list_string;