Art Carpenter - Carpenter’s Complete Guide to the SAS Macro Language

Third Edition

Art Carpenter

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The correct bibliographic citation for this manual is as follows: Carpenter, Art. 2016. Carpenters Complete Guide to the SAS Macro Language, Third Edition. Cary, NC: SAS Institute Inc.

Carpenters Complete Guide to the SAS Macro Language, Third Edition

Copyright 2016, SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA

ISBN 978-1-62959-268-8 (Hard copy)
ISBN 978-1-62960-237-0 (EPUB)
ISBN 978-1-62960-238-7 (MOBI)
ISBN 978-1-62960-239-4 (PDF)

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Helen Carey, coauthor of SAS Today! A Year of Terrific Tips, made the initial suggestions to take on the writing of this book. Although I was at first reluctant to write this book, I am very grateful that she talked me into it. For the first edition she also provided numerous examples and leads to many others.

The basis for the original manuscript that became the first edition of this book was loosely patterned after a SAS macro language course that I wrote for Kirk P. Lafler of Software Intelligence Corporation. He provided permission to revise the 1991 course book SAS System Macro Language, which was produced jointly by California Occidental Consultants and Software Intelligence Corporation. Kirk also developed the CLINICS data set used in many of the examples in this book.

This book incorporates the efforts of many reviewers of the various draft manuscripts. For the first two editions these include the following:

Don Stanley, author of Beyond the Obvious with SAS Screen Control Language, reviewed the portions of having to do with SCL.

A number of (mostly anonymous) macro language developers and technical consultants at SAS took time from their busy schedules to provide many carefully thought-out and helpful comments. Those whose names I do know include these SAS technical reviewers: Don Boudreaux, Chevell Parker, Russ Tyndall, and Edward D. Vlazny.

An independent outside reviewer, Sue Hakomaki, worked with the SAS Press (then the SAS BBU) group to provide additional technical comments for the second edition.

Richard O. Smith of Science Explorations assisted with the technical review of both text and code.

The third edition again reflects the efforts of a host of people that worked long hours to put together this book: For this edition the SAS technical reviewers were even less anonymous than for the second edition, and I would like to thank Davetta Dunlap, Pat Garrett, Paul Grant, Marty Hultgren, Christine Riddiough, and Russ Tyndall for giving so freely of their time.

Edward D. Vlazny (Principal Systems Developer, SAS Macro Facility) allowed me to harass the macro language developers with endless questions.

Rick Langston (Senior Manager, Software Development, SAS) has continued to be very patient with me whenever I bugged him about yet another aspect of SAS.

Peter Crawford (Crawford Software Consultancy) provided a number of very good suggestions in his technical review for the third edition.

The principal editor at SAS Press for this edition was Jenny Jennings Foerst. The coordination of all the reviewers and others from SAS Press was her responsibility. This made it nice for meall I had to do was write. John West and Robin Langford shared copyedit responsibilities with Jenny, and Monica McClain accomplished numerous formatting miracles.

A number of the examples throughout the book were contributed by other SAS programmers. A special thank you goes to the following for sharing their code:

Michael Bramley

Justina Flavin

Diane Goldschmidt

Garth Helf

Don Henderson

Clarence Jackson

Pete Lund

Richard O. Smith

Perry Watts

My biggest debt of gratitude goes to my wife Marilyn for once again putting up with my being buried in one more book project.

This book was written to provide a comprehensive look at the SAS Macro Language. It takes the reader from the most basic introduction through the most advanced topics in the macro language. Regardless of your current level of understanding of the macro language, this book contains new ways of looking at the language as a tool for improving your SAS programs.

Written for all levels of macro language understanding, this book takes the reader from an introduction that assumes no macro language knowledgeand indeed little SAS knowledgeto advanced topics for the advanced SAS programmer. Regardless of where you are in your journey with SAS, you will find this book helpful if you are at all interested in improving your coding skills and in incorporating macro language elements in your programs.

Although SAS programming strength is not a prerequisite per se, the stronger you are in the overall use of SAS, the easier it will be for you to learn the macro language. That said, even someone just starting to learn SAS can take advantage of the fundamentals of the macro language. The book is written with the expectation that readers will come to it with widely varying levels of understanding of SAS. If you are just starting with the macro language, the concepts in this book should provide you challenge for years to come.