topic Re: Converting a number to a date in SAS Programming

Converting a number to a date

kevinharshads1 — Thu, 20 Feb 2020 10:05:39 GMT

I'm pulling data from a database to load into another database. The file spec I've been given says the date I need to provide be in yyyy/mm/dd hh:mm format.

The date field I'm pulling is in SQL Server and it's a datetime field, but from the SAS library side of things it shows as "Number". How can I have it export to my Excel export as a date, and in the yyyy/mm/dd hh:mm format? (e.g. 2019/04/01 00:00)

Re: Converting a number to a date

yabwon — Thu, 20 Feb 2020 10:18:32 GMT

Hi @kevinharshads1 ,

Since SAS keeps dates/ datetimes as a number of days/seconds since January 1st 1960 I would start with adding proper format to the variable you have and then do the export to Excel, e.g.

proc format;
picture myDate (default=16)
          other='%Y/%0m/%0d %0H:%0M' (datatype=datetime);
run;

data want;
  set have;
  format myVariableName myDate.;
run;

proc export data = want ...

All the best

Bart

Re: Converting a number to a date

Reeza — Thu, 20 Feb 2020 16:24:36 GMT

SAS stores dates and times as numbers, what matters on the SAS side is the format, which controls how it's displayed to the user. You need to apply the correct format to have it applied. However, I will say that when pulling directly from a Server datetimes usually come across perfectly fine so does it actually look incorrect to you when viewing the data. SAS only has two types of data, character/numeric.