Question

How to read macro variable as a character in SAS SQL pass-through

My goal is to put “one” as the only value in var3 , but now i get

“unknown column one”

 %macro test(notvar=)

proc sql;
      connect to odbc as conn (datasrc=x user=&user1. password=&pwd1.);
      create table &notvar. (compress=no) as select * from connection to conn
      (
            select var1, var2,
            &notvar. as var3
            from table1
      );
disconnect from conn;
quit;

%mend test;

%test(notvar=one);

Answer 1

Haven’t tested though. I think you can put the macro variable as value of column like:

 select var1, var2,
 "&notvar" as var3
 from table1

or

 select var1, var2,
 symget('notvar') as var3
 from table1

If no quotation mark or function for fetching macro variable value is specified, the selected object (“one” here in your case) is regarded as a column in the original table. So you get error for there is no such column.