topic Re: CONVERT Character to date in New SAS User

CONVERT Character to date

Shoref_Rahman — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 14:54:03 GMT

Hi,

I currently have a list of dates that are in character format

14012018

15012018

16012018

18012018

In order to perform calculations I need these in date format, I want it to look like below and be in date format.

14/01/2018

15/01/2018

16/01/2018

18/01/2018

Thanks,

Re: CONVERT Character to date

RW9 — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 15:02:43 GMT

Dates, times, datetimes are all numerics. Dates is number of days since cuttoff, times number of seconds since midnight.

To convert text to number we use the input() function (as opposed to the put() function to go from number to character). This is:
input(<text>,<format>)

So text can be any string, and format is one of the informats supplied by SAS or built by yourself - all in the documentation.

So:

data want;
  set have;
  num_date=input(char_date,ddmmyy8.);
  format num_date date9.;
run;

Re: CONVERT Character to date

novinosrin — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 15:04:38 GMT

data have_char_date;
input char_date $10.;
cards;
14012018
15012018
15012018
16012018
16012018
18012018
;

data want_num_sas_date;
set have_char_date;
want_num_sas_date=input(char_date,ddmmyy10.);
format want_num_sas_date ddmmyy10.;
run;

proc contents data=want_num_sas_date;
run;