Macro Quoting Functions & %NRQUOTE

Category="BASE SAS","ADVANCE SAS"

Consider we have a macro named Category and is used in a macro call.

SAS will throw error if this macro variable gets resolved during macro call, as the value of this macro variable contains quotation marks. But we don’t want this macro variable to get resolved during the macro call instead we wanted this value as an observation within a dataset (which is created within the macro).

Hence we can make use of macro quoting function which mask the value of a macro variable helping the macro facility to interpret double quotation marks as text rather than macro language symbols.

With functions like %STR, %NRSTR, %QUOTE, and %NRQUOTE, unmatched quotation marks and parentheses must be marked with a % sign. Where as you don't have to mark unmatched symbols in the arguments of %BQUOTE, %NRBQUOTE, and %SUPERQ.

More: http://www.okstate.edu/sas/v8/sashtml/macro/zenid-37.htm