topic Re: Char to Numeric datetime conversion in SAS Programming

Char to Numeric datetime conversion

zimcom — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 13:05:41 GMT

I have the date and time in Char as below

Date and time

2017-03-01T12:10

2017-03-01T13:02

2017-03-07T22:15

2017-03-19T09:32

2017-04-12T11:45

I want to converted to date and time into Numeric

What is the best way to handle this coversion?

THANKS!!

Re: Char to Numeric datetime conversion

PaigeMiller — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 13:12:08 GMT

You use the INPUT() function with the proper informat.

Example:

num_date_time=input(char_date_time,e8601dt.);

You may also want to apply a format to num_date_time.

Re: Char to Numeric datetime conversion

zimcom — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 13:29:19 GMT

num_date_time=input(char_date_time,datetime.);

I tried to convert using input as above, but it did not work (probably because there is a "T" in the character string to separate the date and time).

Re: Char to Numeric datetime conversion

PaigeMiller — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 13:41:52 GMT

If you change the code, then it might not work. If you use the exact code I provided, I know that it does work.

Re: Char to Numeric datetime conversion

zimcom — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 13:46:24 GMT

I really appreciated your help, Thank you so much!
Have a great day

Re: Char to Numeric datetime conversion

ballardw — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 14:53:19 GMT

The T between the date and time portion means that the DATETIME informat will not work as that expects a single punctuation character such as colon, space or slash. The T indicatess a separate ISO layout hence the different informat.