I've run into an odd SAS quirk that I can't figure out - hopefully you can help.

I have a simple macro loop that imports CSV files and for some reason if I use a libref statement in the "out=" part of the import procedure, SAS doesn't recognize the libref as a valid name. But if I use the same libref in a data step, it works just fine.

The specific error it gives is: "ERROR: "TESTDB." is not a valid name."

I'd like to figure this out because I work with pretty big files and want to avoid reading through them more times than is necessary.

Here's the code that works, with some comments in it. I got around the issue by reading in the files, then writing them to permanent SAS datasets in a second step, but ideally I'd like to import the files directly into the "TESTDB" library. Any idea how to get SAS to recognize a libref in the "out=" statement of the import procedure?

libname testdb "C:\SAS test";
%let filepath = C:\SAS test\;

%macro loop(values);
    %let count=%sysfunc(countw(&values));
    %do i = 1 %to &count;
        %let value = %qscan(&values,&i,%str(,));
        proc import datafile = "&filepath.&value..csv"
            out = &value dbms=csv replace; getnames=yes;
                     /*"out=testdb.&value" in the line above does not work*/
        run;
        data testdb.&value; set &value; run;
                 /*here the libref testdb works fine*/
    %end;
%mend;
%loop(%str(test_a,test_b,test_c));

Thanks in advance for your help!

Perhaps try:

out=testdb.%unquote(&value)

Sometimes the macro language does not unquote values automatically. With result that the extra quoting characters introduced by a quoting function (%qscan %str %bquote %superq etc) cause problems.