topic Re: Formatting a data element when using CATS in New SAS User

Formatting a data element when using CATS

titanbob — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 23:16:15 GMT

I'm trying to concatenate 4 data elements together to create a unique ID, the last data element is a date. When I use the CATS function, it is converting the date into the numeric equivalent and that's not what I want. I want the actual date

cats(a.agreement_type,a.customer_number,a.trade_number,a.maturity_date). What do I need to do for the date?

Thanks

Re: Formatting a data element when using CATS

ballardw — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 23:23:14 GMT

@titanbob wrote:

I'm trying to concatenate 4 data elements together to create a unique ID, the last data element is a date. When I use the CATS function, it is converting the date into the numeric equivalent and that's not what I want. I want the actual date

cats(a.agreement_type,a.customer_number,a.trade_number,a.maturity_date). What do I need to do for the date?

Thanks

Possibly something like

cats(a.agreement_type,a.customer_number,a.trade_number, put(a.maturity_date, date9.) ).

if you want the date to appear like 20OCT2018 if the value is an actual SAS date value. Pick the format you want in place of date9 .

Re: Formatting a data element when using CATS

Reeza — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 00:41:34 GMT

Yeah, this is a common gotcha. SAS will convert numeric using the BEST format which puts it in as a number, not the date. You need to use PUT() to convert it to the format desired as shown in BallardW code.

Re: Formatting a data element when using CATS

titanbob — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 14:45:23 GMT

Thanks for the help, really appreciate it!!!