SAS Macro Variable Quoted Concatenation

Question

I am debugging a macro I am writing that will treat a string as either a prefix or suffix of a dataset name based on user input. Then, the quoted result will be fed into another process downstream.

So if the user says Type=1 and provides the string 'data_', the output of the resulting macro variable will be 'data_%'.

I've tried a few different iterations of the below code, but can't quite get it....any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

%let Type=1;
%let TableName=data_;

data _null_;
   if &Type=1 then 
      call symput('qTableName',%unquote(%str(%')(cats(&TableName.,"%"))%str(%')));
   else if &Type=2 then 
      call symput('qTableName',%unquote(%str(%')(cats("%",&TableName.))%str(%')));
run;

%put &qTableName;

Answer 1

Looks like you are trying to add single quotes to a macro variable.

%let TableName=data_;
%let qTableName='data_%';

So in a data step you can use CATQ() .

data _null_;
   call symputx('qTableName',catq('1a',cats(symget('TableName'),'%')));
run;

Or in simple macro code just use %bquote() to allow you to add ' and % without preventing macro variable expansion. But you probably want to remove the macro quoting it will cause.

%let qTableName=%unquote(%bquote('&TableName%'));

Or if you only want to add the % when &TYPE=1 then perhaps you could call the IFC() function. I believe that the %sysfunc() call will remove the macro quoting.

%let Type=1;
%let qTableName=%sysfunc(ifc(&type=1,%bquote('&TableName%'),%bquote('&TableName')));