Function WishList

I am looking for ideas for functions that you would like in SAS but currently do not exist. I have a couple of ideas such as:

Count the number of words in a string (or items in a list).

How about a function to quote the words in a character string?

A function to determine if a number is prime or not?

Would you like a function that returns an MD5 hash from its input?

And I looked through a couple of the SASWARE ballots and found some contenders.
Such as, provide a function that returns the ordinal of a word in a string, such as
WORDINDEX("abc de def", "def")=3

Do you have any other ideas? If so, please let me know.

Macro comments

%macro aQuestion;

%* this code doesn't have any problems does it?;

%put Why are macro comments handled so badly?;
%put I mean, we are at version 9 here people.;
%put I wonder what version number will handle macro comments correctly?;
%put Version 10, 12, 14...?;
%put I wonder at what version number I will finally remember to stop using contractions in my comments!;

%mend aQuestion;

%aQuestion;

BLM

Recently I got an email from someone that thought I might be interested in an article about the SAS Institute in some online industry newsletter. I might have signed up and read the article if the executive summary didn't read like it was written by a 12 year-old making fun of her dad:

"SAS: Striving to Sustain Leadership
by P.J. Jakovljevic
SAS Institute has been successful, moving beyond a business intelligence. Lately, it has lately focused on sustaining its technology leadership, expanding in some vertical markets, and becoming more attentive to the low-end market."

Again, I couldn't bring myself to actually create a login to read it, but this other executive summary on the same site seems like it could be worth the read. If only to convince myself that most people in this industry are truly bat crazy.
"BLM: Buzzword Life Cycle Management
William Sheppard - August 6, 2005

Executive Summary

The IT industry is alive with buzzwords. The management of buzzwords represents a significant area of improvement for both the buzzword users (BU, for example vendors, analyst and consultants) and buzzword consumers (BC, mostly end users). Buzzword life cycle management (BLM) is a proven discipline being applied to this crying need within the software industry..."

My IT skillz must be going soft cause I've never taken part in the buzzword life cycle discipline. But I've got a hunch that waterfalls are involved.

Check it out.