topic How to read in dates from text file with no leading zeroes on month or day? in SAS Programming

How to read in dates from text file with no leading zeroes on month or day?

crockerm12 — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 22:55:27 GMT

Hello! I'm trying to read in a date variable from a text file. The dates are formatted like this:

1/1/2000

1/15/2000

12/1/2000

12/12/2000

There are no leading zeroes on the month or day pieces of the date. I've tried using the ANYDTDTE informat, but it is only recognizing the dates with two digit days, and any date with a one digit day is showing up as missing. I've also tried a few other date informats, but I think since the lengths of the dates in the text file are not consistent, they are not working either. Here is my code:

Data Sample;
Infile 'File_1.txt' dlm='|' firstobs=2 truncover;
input ID $ date ANYDTDTE.;
format date mmddyy10.
run;

Any suggestions?

Re: How to read in dates from text file with no leading zeroes on month or day?

novinosrin — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 23:00:10 GMT

I do not trust SAS when we ask it to guess

data have;
input dates anydtdte21.;
format dates mmddyy10.;
cards;
1/1/2000
1/15/2000
12/1/2000
12/12/2000
;

Re: How to read in dates from text file with no leading zeroes on month or day?

crockerm12 — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 23:05:45 GMT

When i add in the 21 to the informat, it throws off the other variables in the text file. It is a text file with several variables separated by a '|', all with varying lengths, if that makes a difference.

Re: How to read in dates from text file with no leading zeroes on month or day?

novinosrin — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 23:08:26 GMT

Sorry , just read the 10 bytes as max

data have1;
input dates anydtdte10.;
format dates mmddyy10.;
cards;
1/1/2000
1/15/2000
12/1/2000
12/12/2000
;

Re: How to read in dates from text file with no leading zeroes on month or day?

novinosrin — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 23:13:14 GMT

In your very code, you could use a modified list input using an informat than a formatted input and let : colon format modifier to perform the task of not reading any chars once a delimiter is reached/found.

I.e : ANYDTDTE /*notice the colon*/

Data Sample;
Infile 'File_1.txt' dlm='|' firstobs=2 truncover;
input ID $ date : ANYDTDTE21.;
format date mmddyy10.
run;

Re: How to read in dates from text file with no leading zeroes on month or day?

crockerm12 — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 23:14:56 GMT

This worked - THANK YOU!!