!LET not recognized

[beny]

I am trying to define local variables in my syntax to avoid my current method of global search and replace.
When I try to run this code in the syntax editor...
!LET !rawscore=m0005.

I am told "The first word in the line is not recognized as an SPSS Statistics command."

[David Marso]

!LET is only applicable within the body of a MACRO (see DEFINE !ENDDEFINE).
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by the following
"define local variables in my syntax to avoid my current method of global search and replace"
BUT??

DEFINE !myvars ()
a b c d
!ENDDEFINE

FREQ !myvars .

OTOH:  I don't look favorably upon that approach.  Much better to set the bulk syntax up as a macro and pass parameters .
OTOH: Somebody is probably going to try to steer you away from macros and corrupt your mind with Python.

beny wrote

I am trying to define local variables in my syntax to avoid my current method of global search and replace.
When I try to run this code in the syntax editor...
!LET !rawscore=m0005.

I am told "The first word in the line is not recognized as an SPSS Statistics command."

[Poes, Matthew Joseph]

That's because it's a macro only command.  You need to define this as a macro first.

Matthew J Poes
Research Data Specialist
Center for Prevention Research and Development
University of Illinois
510 Devonshire Dr.
Champaign, IL 61820
Phone: [phone]
email: [hidden email]


-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of beny
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 9:03 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: !LET not recognized

I am trying to define local variables in my syntax to avoid my current method of global search and replace.
When I try to run this code in the syntax editor...
!LET !rawscore=m0005.

I am told "The first word in the line is not recognized as an SPSS Statistics command."



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[Richard Ristow]

At 10:02 AM 10/10/2012, beny wrote:

>I am trying to define local variables in my syntax to avoid my current
>method of global search and replace. When I try to run this code in
>the syntax editor...
>
>!LET !rawscore=m0005.
>
>I am told "The first word in the line is not recognized as an SPSS
>Statistics command."

Right. As others have told you, SPSS macro variables exist only
within macros, so this won't work. (This is confusing if you come
from SAS. SAS maintains a name space of macro variables even outside
macros, so this trick DOES work in SAS.)

However, though you can't define a macro variable with this value,
you can define a macro:


DEFINE !rawscore()m0005 !ENDDEFINE.

*  Macro /* !MacEcho */ is used to display the macro expansion   .
DEFINE !MacEcho(!POS !NOEXPAND !CMDEND)
    ECHO  !QUOTE(!CONCAT('     Call  : ',!1)).
    ECHO  !QUOTE(!CONCAT('     Result: ',!EVAL(!1))).
!ENDDEFINE.


!MacEcho !rawscore.
      Call  : !rawscore
      Result: m0005

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