topic Re: Problem with dates and conditions in New SAS User

Problem with dates and conditions

Mick_lb — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 14:48:18 GMT

Hello everyone,

I want to send an email if a file is in a directory or not on the 10th day of the month.

I have a macro (rc) that is equal to 1 if the file exists, or equal to 0 if the file doesn't exist.

I have a problem when the file doesn't exist and if we are the 10th day of the month.

I did a test with today's date.

Here is my code :

%let _date=%sysfunc(today(),DDMMYY10.); /* equals to 09/01/2020 in my case */
%let my=%sysfunc(today(),MMYYS.); /* equals to 01/2020 in my case */
%Macro date_success(rc=);
%if &rc.=0 and &_date.=09/&my. %then %do; /*Here we have normally rc=0 AND _date = 09/&my. = 09/01/2020*/
	%put "====== SUCCESS =============";
%end;
%else %do;
	%put "=========== FAILED =========";
	%put "10/&my.";
%end;
%mend;

%date_success(rc=1) /*Return FAILED as normally planed*/
%date_success(rc=0) /*Doesn't return success, it seems that &_date.=09/&my. doesnt work */

Thank you in advance for your help !

Best regards,

Re: Problem with dates and conditions

ed_sas_member — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 15:05:24 GMT

Hi @Mick_lb

It is never a good idea to format your macro variables.

Here is an attempt to avoid this issue:

%let _date=%sysfunc(today());

%Macro date_success(rc=);

%if &rc.=0 and %sysfunc(day(&_date.)) ne 10 %then %do;
	%put "====== SUCCESS =============";
%end;

%else %do;
	%put "=========== FAILED =========";
	%put %sysfunc(putn(&_date.,date9.));
%end;

%mend;

%date_success(rc=1)
%date_success(rc=0)

Re: Problem with dates and conditions

Tom — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 15:33:18 GMT

What is that it is NOT doing? Seems to work for me since today is 09JAN2020.

1051  %let _date=%sysfunc(today(),DDMMYY10.); /* equals to 09/01/2020 in my case */
1052  %let my=%sysfunc(today(),MMYYS.); /* equals to 01/2020 in my case */
1053  %Macro date_success(rc=);
1054  %put &=rc &=_date &=my ;
1055  %if &rc.=0 and &_date.=09/&my. %then %do; /*Here we have normally rc=0 AND _date = 09/&my. =
1055! 09/01/2020*/
1056    %put "====== SUCCESS =============";
1057  %end;
1058  %else %do;
1059    %put "=========== FAILED =========";
1060    %put "10/&my.";
1061  %end;
1062  %mend;
1063
1064  %date_success(rc=1)
RC=1 _DATE=09/01/2020 MY=01/2020
"=========== FAILED ========="
"10/01/2020"
1065  %date_success(rc=0)
RC=0 _DATE=09/01/2020 MY=01/2020
"====== SUCCESS ============="

Where do the real values of _DATE and MY come from? Is 09 really in the code? Note that to SAS the string '9/01/2020' is not the same as the string '09/01/2020' so you need to generate those leading zeros consistently.

Re: Problem with dates and conditions

Astounding — Fri, 10 Jan 2020 14:15:23 GMT

You are right, this comparison will not work properly:

&_date.=09/&my.

SAS interprets the slash as division, so it computes 9 divided by &my.

Because macro language performs integer arithmetic (dropping any remainders), it is quite likely that 09/&my. yields the exact same result as 10/&my.

If your macro variables have no leading or trailing blanks, you can get around that by adding double quotes:

"&_date."="09/&my."

Re: Problem with dates and conditions

Tom — Fri, 10 Jan 2020 14:19:47 GMT

Right. The implicit %EVAL() function call that %IF statement uses will evaluate strings that look like integer arithmetic.

For your DD/MM/YYYY pattern that is big problem as whatever value day/month gives once you divide it by the much larger year value and you will end up with zero on both sides of the comparison operator.

1160  %put 09/01/2019 -> %eval(09/01/2019) ;
09/01/2019 -> 0