topic Re: How to change a date in Character format to numeric format in New SAS User

How to change a date in Character format to numeric format

hjjijkkl — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 20:33:50 GMT

Hello,

I have a dataset formatted in mmddyy10. but when I run the data, it keeps on telling me its in a character format even though it looks like in numeric format. How can I fix this?

When I open the dataset this is what it looks like.

Data

03/20/1997

04/21/2002

05/7/2019

Re: How to change a date in Character format to numeric format

novinosrin — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 20:44:26 GMT

HI @hjjijkkl Please run a PROC CONTENTS to check whether your Date variable is numeric/char.

proc contents data=your_dataset;

run;

then do the conversion and formatting

Re: How to change a date in Character format to numeric format

hjjijkkl — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 20:55:35 GMT

Yes, I did proc content and it is saying data variable is Char. How do I change the format after proc content?

Re: How to change a date in Character format to numeric format

ballardw — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 21:03:13 GMT

@hjjijkkl wrote:
Yes, I did proc content and it is saying data variable is Char. How do I change the format after proc content?

Create a new data set with a new variable:

data want;
   set have;
   newdate = input(chardate,mmddyy10.);
   format newdate mmddyy10.;
run;

Or possibly go back to the step where where the data was read into SAS and use the mmddyy10. informat to read the value.

Re: How to change a date in Character format to numeric format

novinosrin — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 21:04:33 GMT



Data dates;
input char_Date :$12.;
cards;
03/20/1997
.
04/21/2002
05/7/2019
;

data num_sas_date;
 set dates;
 num_date=input(char_Date,mmddyy10.);
 format num_date mmddyy10.;
run;