The BOM procedure defines a macro variable named _ORBOM_. This variable contains a character string that indicates the status of the procedure. It is set at procedure termination. The form of the _ORBOM_ character string is STATUS= REASON=, where STATUS= is either SUCCESSFUL or ERROR_EXIT, and REASON= (if PROC BOM terminated unsuccessfully) can be one of the following:

CYCLE  

BADDATA_ERROR  

MEMORY_ERROR  

IO_ERROR  

SEMANTIC_ERROR  

SYNTAX_ERROR  

BOM_BUG  

UNKNOWN_ERROR

This information can be used when PROC BOM is one step in a larger program that needs to determine whether the procedure terminated successfully. Because _ORBOM_ is a standard SAS macro variable, it can be used in the ways that all macro variables can be used.