SPSS Macro Arguments

Arguments to SPSS macros need to be explicitly parsed on the macro definition.

Contents

Declaration

define !foo(variables=!cmdend)
  compute foo=!variables.
enddefine.

!foo variables=bar baz.

The available functions are:

Function	Behavior
`!CHAREND('C')`	Consume all tokens until `C`
`!CMDEND`	Consume all tokens until the end of the command
`!ECNLOSE('S','E')`	Consume all tokens starting from `S` until `E`
`!TOKENS(N)`	Consume `N` tokens
`!POSITIONAL`	Used with one of the above functions

Note that arguments are tokenized before being exposed to the macro expansion.

If an argument is bound to a name, it becomes a named argument. If the !POSITIONAL function is used, it becomes a positional argument.

Named arguments are accessed by their name prefixed with an exclamation mark (!).

define !foo(bar=!tokens(1)
           /baz=!tokens(1))
  compute !bar=0.
  compute !baz=0.
!enddefine.

!foo bar=x baz=y.

In this example, the variables x and y will be created.

Positional arguments are set into sequential integer names prefixed with an exclamation mark (!) (i.e. !1, !2, and so on).

define !foo(!positional !tokens(1)
           /!positional !tokens(1))
  compute !1=0.
  compute !2=0.
!enddefine.

!foo x y.

In this example also, the variables x and y will be created.

The entire series of positional arguments as a space-delimited string can be accessed as !*.