NOTE: There's No In In Macro (or is there?!)

I love the SAS macro language and the power it gives you. Being able to control the creation of a SAS program, or its execution path, is immensely valuable. The SAS macro language contains the vast majority of the functional and logic capabilities of the Base SAS language but one notable exception is the ability to use the IN operator in a %do / %end statement. However, you might be pleased to know there's a little-known option to allow the use of IN in macros.

SAS v9.2 introduced the MINOPERATOR system option. It defaults to NO, but if you switch it on then you gain the use of the IN operator in SAS macro language. See the code example in the SAS log below:

26 option minoperator;
27
28 %macro babbage;
29
30   %if &sysver in 9.2 9.3 %then
31     %put I have the use of MINOPERATOR! ;
32   %else
33     %put I have no MINOPERATOR option ;
34
35 %mend babbage;
36
37 %babbage
I have the use of MINOPERATOR!

The SAS macro IN operator has had a checkered history. Introduced in v9.0/9.1 (together with a lot of other nice new macro features), it disappeared in later versions of 9.1 (for instance, the copy of 9.1.3 I have in front of me does not support IN). Regardless, it seems to be back to stay now! I presume there are some possible syntax clashes with existing SAS programs and that's why it firstly disappeared and secondly reappeared as a switched-off option..

You'll notice that the syntax differs a little from Base SAS, but it's all described in the online help. In short, there's no brackets around the list of values, and the values are separated by spaces. You can use the MINDELIMITER system option to specify an alternate delimiter. You can use the hash character (#) instead of "in", but I suggest that would just make your code hard to read.

If you're not already a keen user of SAS macro, find out more and see what you're missing!