topic Re: How to convert Character String (in yyyy-mm-dd format) to Date in SAS Programming

How to convert Character String (in yyyy-mm-dd format) to Date

LL5 — Tue, 05 May 2020 14:37:13 GMT

I have a column calls as_of_date which is a character filed and the format is yyyy-mm-dd like 2020-05-01. How do I convert it to numeric?

I tried input(as_of_date, DDMMYY10.) and several of other formats but they did not work.

Thanks.

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 05 May 2020 14:40:02 GMT

When you have a YMD order in the data, you need a YMD informat, so try

input(as_of_date,yymmdd10.)

PeterClemmensen — Tue, 05 May 2020 14:40:40 GMT

data test;
    dt1 = '2020-05-01';
    dt2 = input(dt1, yymmdd10.);
    format dt2 yymmdd10.;
run;

ballardw — Tue, 05 May 2020 15:30:24 GMT

Hint in reading informat and format descriptions:

YY = year (2 or 4 digits)

MM = month number

DD = day of month number

So when your data is in year month day order it becomes a bit more obvious that you want some form of YYMMDD informat/format.