Passing Character Values to Methods

In SAS Micro Analytic Service, DS2 method input parameters are passed by value. What this means is that a copy of the value is passed to the method. When passing character parameters, a copy of the parameter is made to ensure that the original value is not modified. Making sure that character data is sized appropriately ensures that less copying occurs.
DS2 method output parameters, which are specified by the in_out keyword, are passed by reference. Therefore, no copy is made.
method copy_made(char(256) x);
  ...
end;
 
method no_copy(in_out char x);
  ...
end;
Last updated: March 2, 2017