topic Re: coverting date into a char (or int) with the same look in SAS Programming

coverting date into a char (or int) with the same look

akosyan — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 20:44:22 GMT

Hi All,

Can you please help me with the following formatting change ?

I have a date column (format yynnm4. for example 1803 representing 2018 March)

I want to create the exact same column but as text ( for example text 1803, or as an integer 1803).

Thanks,

Re: coverting date into a char (or int) with the same look

ballardw — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 20:56:42 GMT

Depending on what you mean by "exact same column".

A new variable with the character value can be done with:

data want;
   set have;
   datechar = put(date,yymmn4.);
run;

I believe your description confused the M and N in the format.

If you mean to change the existing variable you can't directly. Once a variable is created the type is fixed. You would have to rename your existing variable and create a variable with the same name using similar code:

data want;
   set have (rename=(date=olddate);
   date = put(olddate,yynnm4.);
   drop olddate;
run;

Re: coverting date into a char (or int) with the same look

Kurt_Bremser — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 20:56:50 GMT

length crdate $4;
crdate = put(numdate,yymmn4.);

you just use the display format in a put() function.

Re: coverting date into a char (or int) with the same look

Patrick — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 21:00:45 GMT

Why? It's much better to store dates as SAS Date values and not as strings.

You can use a put function with a format to write a numerical value as a string. You then assign the result of this to a new variable of type character.

date_string_var=put(sasdate_var, yymmn4.);

Re: coverting date into a char (or int) with the same look

akosyan — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 21:04:28 GMT

Thanks all, this worked !!!