NOTE: Macro Options

This post was kindly contributed by NOTE: The blog of RTSL.eu - Development with SAS® - go there to comment and to read the full post.

Last week I wrote about the availability of the IN operator in macro through the use of the MINOPERATOR system option. I mentioned that SAS v9.0/9.1 had introduced a number of useful features to the SAS macro capability. Here are some options that you might find useful:

MPRINTNEST – Augments the information written to the log by MPRINT. If the MPRINT option has also been set, MPRINTNEST will show the level of nesting of macro calls, and the names of the nested macros. Very useful. V9.3 introduced a couple of new macro functions in this area: %SYSMEXECDEPTH returns the depth of nesting from the point of call, and %SYSMEXECNAME returns the name of the macro executing at a nesting level.

MCOMPILENOTE – Issues a message ot the log after a macro has been compiled. Successful completion of macro compilation is normally silent, so this forms a handy, positive confirmation.

MAUTOLOCDISPLAY – Echoes the source’s location to the log each time an autocall macro is used (rather than once at compile-time). This provides a neat confirmation that SAS has picked-up the macro source from the directory you intended. In v9.3, MAUTOCOMPLOC specifies the location of an autocall macro when compiled by writing a message to the log.

This post was kindly contributed by NOTE: The blog of RTSL.eu - Development with SAS® - go there to comment and to read the full post.