topic Re: Convert Numeric to Date in New SAS User

Convert Numeric to Date

DarrylLawrence — Tue, 05 Nov 2019 06:33:31 GMT

Good day

A datetime field was incorrectly stored (into a new table) as numeric 8.

Original Date value of 9 July 2019 is stored as 1878249600. I think this includes the date and time.

How do I convert the numeric field back to a datetime or date9 field.

Re: Convert Numeric to Date

PeterClemmensen — Tue, 05 Nov 2019 06:40:02 GMT

Simply use an appropriate format to display the value correctly. And use the Datepart Function to display the value as a date

data _null_;
    dt=1878249600;
    d =datepart(dt);
    put dt = datetime20. // d= date9.;
run;

Result:

dt=09JUL2019:00:00:00

d=09JUL2019

Re: Convert Numeric to Date

SASKiwi — Tue, 05 Nov 2019 06:41:04 GMT

Just apply a SAS datetime format to the variable. For example:

format MyDatetime datetime22.2;

Re: Convert Numeric to Date

Patrick — Tue, 05 Nov 2019 06:45:15 GMT

SAS date and datetime values are stored as numeric and a length of 8 is correct as well. The number you see looks like a SAS datetime value which is nothing else than the count of seconds since 1/1/1960.

The only thing you need to do is apply a SAS format to the numerical column so your SAS datetime value becomes human readable. Here the docu explaining this much better than I can.

data test;
  dttm=1878249600;
  dttm2=dttm;
  dttm3=dttm;
  format dttm2 datetime21. dttm3 B8601DN10.;
  output;
  stop;
run;

proc print data=test;
run;

Re: Convert Numeric to Date

DarrylLawrence — Tue, 05 Nov 2019 06:55:19 GMT

Thanks Patrick

I tried it and it works.

Sometimes the simplest answer is the best. I was trying many different ways to convert the number to a date and in the end it just needed to be formatted.