topic Re: Convert character to date in SAS Programming

Convert character to date

rmacarthur — Sun, 20 May 2018 03:48:43 GMT

Am not able to convert character text to a SAS date, apologies for the simple request:

Data to be converted are "Mark_App_s" character of length 12.

Date sample

Mark_App_s

11/20/2001

09/05/2017

06/06/2017

10/31/2017

Code sample is :

Data App_2 ;
set App_1 ;
Mark_App = input(Mark_App_s, yymmdd10.) ;
format Mark_App mmddyy10.;
run ;

Thanks !

Re: Convert character to date

Shmuel — Sun, 20 May 2018 04:42:09 GMT

Change the informat to mmdyy10.:

Mark_App = input(Mark_App_s, mmdyy10.) ;

Re: Convert character to date

ballardw — Mon, 21 May 2018 22:22:11 GMT

The yymmdd10. informat would be used to read data that starts with the year such as 2001/11/20.

You may sometimes have to use something like input(strip(variable),<informat>) if the character variable has leading spaces so that the informat starts reading where the data actually begins.

Re: Convert character to date

rmacarthur — Tue, 22 May 2018 00:34:17 GMT

Thanks, I was using the correct INFOMAT, (mmddyy10.), very sorry I just typed it wrong (above), and I have stripped the leading and trailing characters, and have also set the length of the character variable "Mark_App_s " to $12.

So here is a data sample:

Mark_App_s
11/20/2001
09/05/2017
08/30/2017
06/06/2017
10/31/2017
01/23/2004

and here is the code

Data App_2 ;
set App_1 ;
Mark_App = input(Mark_App_s, mmddyy10.) ;
format Mark_App mmddyy10.;
run ;

And this code does not change the character variable to a date variable.

Re: Convert character to date

Shmuel — Tue, 22 May 2018 05:43:07 GMT

You can't change type of a variable and there is no a date type.

In your code Mark_app will be a numeric type. The format defines that it is a date and how to display it.

The input variable - Mark_app_s - is a char type variable.

The only way to "change" variable type is by recreating it:

data want;
  set have (rename=(numvar=char));
        numvar = input(char, <informat>);
run;

Re: Convert character to date

rmacarthur — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 01:35:55 GMT

Note about the solution, the difficulty was caused by hidden characters in the variable "Mark_App_s ", which was imported from an online database. Prior to implementing the above solution, I had to parse the variable using a SUBSTRING into MM, DD, YYYY components, Then tried converting each to a numeric variable. If it would not convert using an INPUT function, that indicated there were hidden characters, and I continued to use the SUBSTRING function until the numeric conversion method worked. Only then could the

Mark_App_d = mdy(Month_2,Day,Year)

function be used to convert the character variables (Month_2,Day,Year) to a SAS Date.

Thanks again for your assistance !