macrocore

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 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. Contributions are welcomed.

Components

Base library

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

Meta library

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

xcmd library:

• OS specific
• Metadata aware
• X command enabled
• Prefixes: mw,mu,mx

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/Boemska/macrocore/master/macrocore.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).
  • mw for macros that only work in Windows (should work in ALL versions of windows)
  • mu for macros that only work in Unix type environments (should work in ALL types of unix environment)
  • mx for macros that use X command and will work in both windows and unix environments.
• 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
• no trailing empty lines

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
• copyright. Must be GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE v3.

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).