topic Re: convert year date value from character to numeric in SAS Programming

convert year date value from character to numeric

dr2014 — Mon, 12 Nov 2018 16:53:13 GMT

Hi,

I have the date1 value = 1978 i.e. all in 4 digits with informat and format of $64. I want to covert it to a numeric value with a format of year4.

First I tried:

data want;

set have;

if date2=input(date1,$64);

format date2 year4.;

run;

It doesn't work.

If I remove the format statement it keeps the value as character as the original variable.

I also tried date2=input(date1, year4.); and that doesn't work too.

Thanks.

PaigeMiller — Mon, 12 Nov 2018 17:00:47 GMT

There is no YEAR format or INFORMAT.

Years don't need formats, if the year is 1978, everyone knows what that means and you don't need to change its appearance with a format.

In your case, you want to simply convert from character to numeric

date2 = input(date1,4.);

VDD — Mon, 12 Nov 2018 17:02:05 GMT

you could assign a length to the date2 like this

data want;

length date2 4.;

set have;

dr2014 — Mon, 12 Nov 2018 17:04:25 GMT

Thank you!

dr2014 — Mon, 12 Nov 2018 17:04:56 GMT

And will remember that.