Forcing variable into macro text string

[jonnysnow]

How can I get a filename to contain the current month/year? It's easy to get numeric variables:

[tt]mth = month(today());
yr = year(today());[/tt]

But, later on I want a filename to actually contain these as strings, something like:

[tt]data file200310;[/tt]

I've tried:
[tt]
%let M = mth;
%let Y = yr;
data file&Y.&M;
[/tt]

but this just gives me

[tt]data fileyrmth;[/tt]

How do I get the value of these into text strings?

 

[klaz2002]

Johnnysnow,
It is a matter of timing, a macro term used for when the macro compiler resolves the macro var. You could use the '&&' in front of your macro var. This will resolve to the macro var at compile time. At run-time the value you want would be inserted. Of course this is too complicated for right now. It took me two years to understand how it works and I still don't understand all of it. Here is how I would do what you want to do. I gather that you want to name a file using a date of some type.
try this....
data _null_;
call symput('filename',trim(left(put(year(date()),8.)))||
trim(left(put(month(date()),8.))) );
run;
In the next step (data or proc) the macro var filename is available to your code. '&filename' will now be your date string. So..

ods pdf file="data &filename..pdf";
.....

I hope that this helps.
Klaz

 

[sk1]

How about using %sysfunc()..
so the code would be

%let mth= %sysfunc(today(),month);
%let yr = %sysfunc(today(),year);

data file&mth.&yr.;
set infile;
run;

hth
SK1

 

[klaz2002]

SK1,
I thought of that before I wrote the suggestion above. The problem I had with using the %sysfunc() macro function was would it work at all. I checked the SAS documentation for 8.2 and found that the TODAY() function was not listed in the list that the Sysfunc macro function supported. So I suggested the above example.
Klaz

 

[ChrisW75]

The best way is to use a Data _null_ step as follows

data _null_;
date = put(today(),ddmmyy6.);
call symput('filedt',date);
run;

data file&filedt;
...