SAS Macro Library for Application Development


Keywords
SAS, Viya, SASjs, macros
License
MIT
Install
npm install macrocore@7.4.3

Documentation

Macro Core

Much quality. Many standards. The Macro Core library exists to save time and development effort! Herein ye shall find a veritable host of MIT-licenced, production quality SAS macros. These are a mix of tools, utilities, functions and code generators that are useful in the context of Application Development on the SAS platform (eg https://datacontroller.io). Contributions are welcomed.

You can download and compile them all in just two lines of SAS code:

filename mc url "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/macropeople/macrocore/master/mc_all.sas";
%inc mc;

Documentation: https://macropeople.github.io/macrocore.github.io/files.html

Components

base library (SAS9/Viya)

  • OS independent
  • Not metadata aware
  • No X command
  • Prefixes: mf, mp

meta library (SAS9 only)

  • OS independent
  • Metadata aware
  • No X command
  • Prefixes: mm

viya library (Viya only)

  • OS independent
  • No X command
  • Prefixes: mv

metax library (SAS9 only)

  • OS specific
  • Metadata aware
  • X command enabled
  • Prefixes: mmw,mmu,mmx

Installation

First, download the repo to a location your SAS system can access. Then update your sasautos path to include the components you wish to have available,eg:

options insert=(sasautos="/your/path/macrocore/base");
options insert=(sasautos="/your/path/macrocore/meta");

The above can be done directly in your sas program, via an autoexec, or an initialisation program.

Alternatively - for quick access - simply run the following! This file contains all the macros.

filename mc url "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/macropeople/macrocore/master/mc_all.sas";
%inc mc;

Standards

File Properties

  • filenames much match macro names
  • filenames must be lowercase
  • macro names must be lowercase
  • one macro per file
  • prefixes:
    • mf for macro functions (can be used in open code).
    • mp for macro procedures (which generate sas code)
    • mm for metadata macros (interface with the metadata server).
    • mmx for macros that use metadata and are XCMD enabled
    • mx for macros that are XCMD enabled
    • mv for macros that will only work in Viya
  • follow verb-noun convention
  • unix style line endings (lf)
  • individual lines should be no more than 80 characters long
  • UTF-8
  • no trailing white space

Header Properties

The Macro Core documentation is created using doxygen. A full list of attributes can be found here but the following are most relevant:

  • file. This needs to be present in order to be recognised by doxygen.
  • brief. This is a short (one sentence) description of the macro.
  • details. A longer description, which can contain doxygen markdown.
  • param. Name of each input param followed by a description.
  • return. Explanation of what is returned by the macro.
  • version. The EARLIEST SAS version in which this macro is known to work.
  • author. Author name, contact details optional

All macros must be commented in the doxygen format, to enable the online documentation.

Coding Standards

  • Indentation = 2 spaces. No tabs!
  • Macro variables should not have the trailing dot (&var not &var.) unless necessary to prevent incorrect resolution
  • The closing %mend; should not contain the macro name.
  • All macros should be defined with brackets, even if no variables are needed - ie %macro x(); not %macro x;
  • Mandatory parameters should be positional, all optional parameters should be keyword (var=) style.
  • All dataset references to be 2 level (eg work.blah, not blah).
  • Avoid naming collisions! All macro variables should be local scope. Use system generated work tables where possible - eg data ; set sashelp.class; run; data &output; set &syslast; run;

General Notes

  • All macros should be compatible with SAS versions from support level B and above (so currently 9.2 and later). If an earlier version is not supported, then the macro should say as such in the header documentation, and exit gracefully (eg %if %sysevalf(&sysver<9.3) %then %return).