Combining Multiple SAS Files Using a Macro with the “set” command | SAS Code Fragments

If you had 2 SAS data files, say "file1" and "file2", you could combine them using a program like…

data both;
  set file1 file2 ;
run;

If, however, you had 200 SAS data files, say "file1" "file2" … "file200" then this would be alot of typing doing the "set" statement for 200 files.  Instead, you can make a SAS macro as shown below.  This macro just combines "file1" and "file2", but can be extended to read multiple files.

data file1;
  input a;
cards;
1
2
3
;
run;

data file2;
input a;
cards;
4
5
6
;
run;
%macro combine;
data big;
  set
  %do i = 1 %to 2;
    file&i
  %end;
  ;
run;
%mend;
%combine;
proc print data=big;
run;