Any automated program should check for errors and unexpected conditions, such as inability to access a resource and presence of invalid values. Unlike traditional programming languages such as Python and C# that stop processing when an error occurs, SAS barrels ahead through the rest of the program. Therefore, carelessly-written SAS programs can create unwanted side effects, such as overwriting an output data set with bad data.
Previously I wrote about a robust solution for checking SAS error codes which wraps the entire program in a macro and invokes %GOTO EXIT in case an error. This is still the ideal solution when some part of the program must continue, but it comes at a cost: wrapping SAS code in a macro disables syntax highlighting in the SAS Enhanced Editor (though not in SAS Studio). Also, it can be awkward to work with the large code block delimited by the macro, so this post focuses on two alternatives.
