symget - a list of macro variables

Question

I'm trying to reproduce the code found here, specifically on page 7: http://www.nesug.org/proceedings/nesug04/pm/pm13.pdf

/* set up example*/
%let var_1 = 'abc';
%let var_2 = 'def';
%let var_3 = 'ghi';
%let val_1 = 1.5;
%let val_2 = 3;
%let val_3 = 4.5;

/* use symget to create a list of var names and values */
data scores;
  length var_name $32 value 8.;

  do _N_ = 1 to 3;
    var_name = symget('var_' || left(_N_));
    value    = symget('val_' || left(_N_));
  end;
run;

However, the end result that I'm getting is only the last variable, not all 3:

var_name    value
ghi         4.5

I want:

var_name    value
abc         1.5
def         3
ghi         4.5

Why isn't this working?

Answer 1

You are missing an output statement to write each row. Insert it here:

do _N_ = 1 to 3;
  var_name = symget('var_' || left(_N_));
  value    = symget('val_' || left(_N_));
  output;
end;