topic Setting up a date macro variable in SAS Programming

Setting up a date macro variable

kajal_30 — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 12:05:27 GMT

Hi Team,

I am setting up a date macro variable in my program as below:

1. if I put %let date = 01may18 ;

it gets resolve to 01may2018

2. If I put %let date = 01may19 ;

it gets resolve to 01may2019

3. if I put %let date = 01may20;

it gets resolve to 1920 which I am expecting to be 2020

May I know which option in the program will give me correct results?

Re: Setting up a date macro variable

Jagadishkatam — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 12:18:36 GMT

Please use the below option and then execute the macro variable

SAS software treats the year 2000 like any other leap year. If you use two-digit year numbers for dates, you'll probably need to adjust the default setting for the YEARCUTOFF= option to work with date ranges for your data, or switch to four-digit years. The following program changes the YEARCUTOFF= value to 1950. This change means that all two digit dates are now assumed to fall in the 100-year span from 1950 to 2049.

options yearcutoff=1950;

Re: Setting up a date macro variable

Kurt_Bremser — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 14:29:11 GMT

There's an extremely simple solution:

USE FOUR-DIGIT YEARS!!!

I am once again astonished that there are still people who, after the Y2k scare, are ***redacted*** to work with two-digit years, and expect anything other than problems.

Next, date values are best stored in raw form in macro variables:

 %let date=%sysfunc(inputn(2020-05-01,yymmdd10.));

As you now only need to use &date (no quotes) in your code.

Re: Setting up a date macro variable

ghosh — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 14:38:48 GMT

%let date= '01may2019'd;

Re: Setting up a date macro variable

kajal_30 — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 14:53:22 GMT

Thank you so much it worked