Using SAS Macro to pipe a list of filenames from a Windows directory

Question

I am trying to amend the macro below to accept a macro parameter as the \'location\' argument for a dir command. However I cannot get it to resolve correctly due to the nes

Answer 1

We use this little macro

%macro getdir(dir=,redirect=, switch=);
    options noxwait xsync;
    %if %length(&switch)=0 %then %let switch=b;
    data _null_; 
      xcmd='dir "' || "&dir" || '"' || "/&switch " || ">" || "&redirect";
      put 'generated the following command: ' xcmd=; 
      rc=system(xcmd);
      put 'result code of above command: ' rc=;
    run;
%mend getdir;

Sample Call

%getdir(dir=c:\temp\,redirect=c:\temp\dir.txt) *run;

If you run in batch and don't have the option noxwait xsync the job will hang on the server waiting for an operator response.