topic Re: Invalid argument to function MONTH ? in SAS Programming

Invalid argument to function MONTH ?

AllSoEasy — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 14:55:01 GMT

Hello all,

I am getting "invalid argument" error to both the MONTH() function and YEAR() function, but I am confused because I don't see why the argument is invalid. The variable is "month_date" and here are two example observations:

month_date

31Jul2010 0:00:00

in SAS column properties the data format is listed as "DATETIME20." -- Why is this not a valid format for these functions which state in their documentation that they accept datetime variables? I must be missing something here..

-Thank you!

Re: Invalid argument to function MONTH ?

PaigeMiller — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 14:58:07 GMT

When a SAS variable month_date is actually date/time values, then the following code does not work

month(month_date)

However, the following code should work

month(datepart(month_date))

Re: Invalid argument to function MONTH ?

Vince28_Statcan — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 15:52:29 GMT

I don't see anywhere in MONTH and YEAR documentation that it accepts datetime variables. It only mentions it accepts date variables. As pointed out by Paige, datepart(datetimevariable) is the way to output a date out of a datetime and should fix your issue.

There is a clear distinction between dates (number of days since 01JAN1960) and datetimes (number of seconds since 01JAN1960).

Re: Invalid argument to function MONTH ?

AllSoEasy — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 16:31:15 GMT

Excellent, easy enough. Thank you!