If you use the PUT statement in a DATA step to generate URLs, you might get unexpected spaces in your output. URLs should never contain spaces, but the PUT statement always includes a space after it writes the contents of a DATA step variable. For example, the code

   url=symget('_URL');
   put '<A HREF="' url '?
      _service=default&_program=...';

produces

   <A HREF="/cgi-bin/broker ?
      _service=default&_program=...

The best way to overcome this problem is to construct the entire line of HTML code in a character string DATA step variable and write it with a PUT statement. For example,

   url=symget('_URL');
   line='<A HREF="'||trim(left(url))||
      '?_service=default&_program=...';
   put line;

This code produces the line correctly because nothing follows the variable in the PUT statement. A space is still produced, but it is at the end of the line. It is also possible to use formatted output or pointer control syntax to eliminate unwanted spaces. For more details, see SAS documentation about the PUT statement.

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