14.2.3 Macro Bodies

As previously shown, a macro body may contain a fragment of a PSPP command (such as a variable name). A macro body may also contain full PSPP commands. In the latter case, the macro body should also contain the command terminators.

Most PSPP commands may occur within a macro. The DEFINE command itself is one exception, because the inner !ENDDEFINE ends the outer macro definition. For compatibility, BEGIN DATA…END DATA. should not be used within a macro.

The body of a macro may call another macro. The following shows one way that could work:

DEFINE !commands()
DESCRIPTIVES !vars.
FREQUENCIES /VARIABLES=!vars.
!ENDDEFINE.

DEFINE !vars() v1 v2 v3 !ENDDEFINE.
!commands

* We can redefine the variables macro to analyze different variables:
DEFINE !vars() v4 v5 !ENDDEFINE.
!commands

The !commands macro would be easier to use if it took the variables to analyze as an argument rather than through another macro. The following section shows how to do that.