topic Re: How to delete a dataset line based on date and time? in New SAS User

How to delete a dataset line based on date and time?

joostman2 — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 16:12:24 GMT

I'm quite new to SAS and did some in a dataset which I want to clean.
I have a dataset as shown below. The record shown is the one I want to delete from the dataset.

I want to get a program to clean my testing, but want it be based on date (datum), time (Tijd) and name (Mailing)

I was thinking that below programcode would do the trick

DATA Datasettest2;
set Datasettest;
IF MAILING EQ 'ZM0000' AND Datum EQ "11jan2022"d AND Tijd EQ "16:49:24"T THEN DELETE;
RUN;

Unfortunately the program runs and the line is still there afterwards.

If I just search for date (datum) and name (Mailing) it works, but I want to be more specific with a timestamp added to preserve certain lines.

DATA Datasettest2;
set Datasettest;
IF MAILING EQ 'ZM0000' AND Datum EQ "11jan2022"d THEN DELETE;
RUN;

I am assuming there must me something with the time part as this doesn't work.
I am specially looking for this time field to match, not to look for alternate solutions based on other fields.

I did a proc content and below is shown from the dataset. Maybe this could help?

Re: How to delete a dataset line based on date and time?

ballardw — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 16:17:23 GMT

Obviously we don't have any of your data.

Equality is a pretty strong requirement. Depending on how your variable Tijd was created you might have a very small fractional second component that is not displayed with the TIME8. format, or is rounding to seconds. I suggest trying

round(Tijd) = "16:49:24"t

to force an integer number of seconds for comparison

Re: How to delete a dataset line based on date and time?

joostman2 — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 16:24:28 GMT

Thank you!
Never thought beyond seconds.. Indeed rounding did the job
Thanks as well for the line, as I would not have known how to place that in the right order!