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/sasjs/core/main/all.sas";
%inc mc;

Documentation: https://core.sasjs.io

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

lua library

Wait - this is a macro library - what is LUA doing here? Well, it is a little known fact that you CAN run LUA within a SAS Macro. It has to be written to a text file with a .lua extension, from where you can %include it. So, without using the proc lua wrapper.

To contribute, simply write your freeform LUA in the LUA folder. Then run the build.py, which will convert your LUA into a data step with put statements, and create the macro wrapper with a ml_ prefix. You can then use your module in any program by running:

/* compile the lua module */
%ml_yourmodule()

/* Execute.  Do not use the restart keyword! */
proc lua;
submit;
  print(yourStuff);
endsubmit;
run;

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/sasjs/core/main/all.sas";
%inc mc;

Standards

File Properties

filenames much match macro names
filenames must be lowercase, without spaces
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
- ml for macros that are used to compile LUA modules
- 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

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.

Dependencies

SAS code can contain one of two types of dependency - SAS Macros, and SAS Includes. When compiling projects using the SASjs CLI the doxygen header is scanned for @li items under the following headers:

  <h4> SAS Macros </h4>
  @li mf_nobs.sas
  @li mm_assignlib.sas

  <h4> SAS Includes </h4>
  @li somefile.ddl SOMEFREF
  @li someprogram.sas FREFTWO

The CLI can then extract all the dependencies and insert as precode (SAS Macros) or in a temp engine fileref (SAS Includes) when creating SAS Jobs and Services.

When contributing to this library, it is therefore important to ensure that all dependencies are listed in the header in this format.

Coding Standards

Indentation = 2 spaces. No tabs!
no trailing white space
no invisible characters, other than spaces. If invisibles are needed, use hex literals.
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 must be 2 level (eg work.blah, not blah). This is to avoid contention when options DATASTMTCHK=ALLKEYWORDS is in effect.
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;
The use of quit; for proc sql is optional unless you are looking to benefit from the timing statistics.

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).

vi9nesh/core