The default option setting VALIDVARNAME=ANY is ignored when you use the META engine in SAS Enterprise Guide to define a metadata library in a SAS autoexec file. This problem occurs under the following conditions:

1. You assign a library using the META engine with the setting METAOUT=DATA in a SAS autoexec file. For example, you add the following in C:\SAS\config\Lev1\SASApp\WorkspaceServer\autoexec_usermods.sas:
   libname testmeta meta library="TESTMETA" repname="Foundation" metaout=data;
2. Open SAS Enterprise Guide and perform a task on a table that has at least one column that contains a special character or space in its name. Here is an example:
   data test;
   "SYO#"n="TEST";
   run;
   
   data TESTMETA.TEST;
   set test;
   run;

In this situation, the test data is not created and you receive the following error message:

To prevent the system from ignoring VALIDVARNAME=ANY, you need to add the following OPTIONS statement to the autoexec file where the library is assigned: 

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