If you want to create an empty dataset that has variables named like some values you have in a macro variables you could do something like this.
Save the values into macro variables that are named by some pattern, like v1
, v2
...
proc sql;
select compress(Name||"_Ref") into :v1-:v20 from contents;
quit;
If you don't know how many values there are, you have to count them first, I assumed there are only 20 of them.
Then, if all your variables are character variables of length 100, you create a dataset like this:
%macro create_dataset;
data want;
length %do i=1 %to 20; &&v&i $100 %end;
;
stop;
run;
%mend;
%create_dataset; run;
This is how you can do it if you have the values in macro variable, there is probably a better way to do it in general.
If you don't want to create an empty dataset but only change the variable names, you can do it like this:
proc sql;
select name into :v1-:v20 from contents;
quit;
%macro rename_dataset;
data new_names;
set have(rename=(%do i=1 %to 20; &&v&i = &&v&i.._ref %end;));
run;
%mend;
%rename_dataset; run;