Performs a text substitution on a file. More...

Detailed Description

Performs a find and replace on a file, either in place or to a new file. Can be used on files where lines are longer than 32767.

Works by reading in the file byte by byte, then marking the beginning and end of each matched string, before finally doing the replace.

Full credit for this highly efficient and syntactically satisfying SAS logic goes to Bartosz Jabłoński, founder of the SAS Packages framework.

Usage:

%let file="%sysfunc(pathname(work))/file.txt";
%let str=replace/me;
%let rep=with/this;
data _null_;
  file &file;
  put 'blahblah';
  put "blahblah&str.blah";
  put 'blahblahblah';
run;
%mp_replace(&file, findvar=str, replacevar=rep)
data _null_;
  infile &file;
  input;
  list;
run;

Note - if you are running a version of SAS that will allow the io package in LUA, you can also use this macro: mp_gsubfile.sas

Parameters

infile	The QUOTED path to the file on which to perform the substitution
findvar=	Macro variable NAME containing the string to search for
replacevar=	Macro variable NAME containing the replacement string
outfile=	(0) Optional QUOTED path to the adjusted output file (to avoid overwriting the first file).

SAS Macros

Related Macros

Version: 9.4

Author: Bartosz Jabłoński; Allan Bowe

Definition in file mp_replace.sas.