The macros are part of the SAS Autocall library, and are automatically available for use in your SAS program, provided the SAS system option MAUTOSOURCE is in effect. For more information about autocall libraries, refer to SAS Macro Language: Reference.

All macros are defined using keyword parameters. With keyword parameters, you do not have to keep track of the positions of the parameters when calling any of the bill-of-material postprocessing macros. The general format of a call to a macro in this chapter is:

%bommacro(keyword1=value1, keyword2=value2,..., keywordn=valuen);

Each keyword parameter allows you to initialize a macro variable with the same name as the parameter inside the macro program to the value after the equals sign of a parameter. It is not necessary to specify all the keyword parameters in a macro program call. If you do not specify a keyword parameter, the macro program uses the default value of the parameter to initialize the corresponding macro variable. If the parameter does not have a default value defined for it, the corresponding macro variable is initialized with a null value. In a macro program call, no value after the equals sign of a parameter initializes the corresponding macro variable with a null value. Refer to Chapter 4, "Macro Programs," in SAS Macro Programming Made Easy (Burlew 1998) for details about macros with keyword parameters.