[SOLVED] passing a list of quoted strings as a parameter to a SAS macro and using it in a data field

passing a list of quoted strings as a parameter to a SAS macro and using it in a data field

I am writing a macro to send e-mails, using a rest api available in our company. (The macro will be deployed as a sasautos macro.) The attachments parameter should allow to pass a list of file paths, so this should be valid code;

%send_mail(subject=Voorbeeld e-mail
    , to=dirk.horsten@ourOrganisation.be
    , message_html =Dear collegue<br/><br/>Here are the promised files.<br/><br/>Regards<br/>Dirk Horsten
    , attachments = "/our/data/répertoire français/file&today_yymmdd..xlsx" 
        "/our/data/some_folder/file with blanks.xlsx" 
    );

Within the macro %send_mail(), I would like to put the attachments parameter in a string attachment_list Perl Regular Expressions in SAS.

data _null_;
    ...
    length fileRef $8 xpath $256 ;
    attachment_list = "&attachments";
    _rxAttachment = prxParse('/".+?"/');
    _rxStart = 1;
    _rxStop = length(attachment_list);
    call prxNext(_rxAttachment, _rxStart, _rxStop, attachment_list, _rxPos, _rxLen);
    if not _rxPos then putlog 'WARNING: unable to parse your attachments';
    else do;
        attach_nr = 0;
        do while (_rxPos);
            attach_nr = attach_nr + 1;
            xpath = substr(attachment_list, _rxPos, _rxLen);
            fileRef = cats('_ML_',attach_nr);
            call execute (catx(' '
                , 'filename'
                , fileRef
                , xpath
                , ';'));
            length attachRef_N attachName_N attachType_N $32;
            attachRef_N = cats('attachRef_', attach_nr);                        
            call symputx(attachRef_N, fileRef, 'local');
            attachName_N = cats('attachName_', attach_nr);
            call symputx(attachName_N, scan(xpath, -1, '/'), 'local');
        end;
        call symputx('attach_count', attach_nr, 'local');
    end;
    ...
run;

(I hope I did not make errors while simplifying the code for you.)

However, the quotes within the parameter mess up with the quotes in attachment_list = "&attachments"; Does anyone see a work around, so that my users should not worry about this?

The following are not acceptable solutions:

Ask my users to double their quotes, as in , attachments = ""/our/data/répertoire français/file1.xlsx"" ""/our/data/some_folder/file with blanks.xlsx"". (They would not understand and I would get one of them on the phone weekly.)
Ask them to use ' instead of ", because then they cannot use macro variables within their call to my macro

Solution

Maybe you can load the quoted string into an array then you can quote them or otherwise process as needed.

50         %let attachments = "/our/data/répertoire français""/file/today_yymmdd..xlsx"
51                 "/our/data/some_folder/file with blanks.xlsx";
52         %let attw = %sysfunc(countw(%superq(ATTACHMENTS),%str( ),Q));
53         %put NOTE: &=attw;
NOTE: ATTW=2
54         data _null_;
55            array _att[&attw] $256 (&attachments);
56            put _all_;
57            do i = 1 to dim(_att);
58               _att[i] = quote(strip(_att[i]),"'");
59               end;
60            put _all_;
61            run;

_att1=/our/data/répertoire français"/file/today_yymmdd..xlsx _att2=/our/data/some_folder/file with blanks.xlsx i=. _ERROR_=0 _N_=1
_att1='/our/data/répertoire français"/file/today_yymmdd..xlsx' _att2='/our/data/some_folder/file with blanks.xlsx' i=3 _ERROR_=0 _N_=1