topic Re: How do you add single quotes to a macro variable that's a date? in SAS Programming

How do you add single quotes to a macro variable that's a date?

unwanted_banana — Tue, 06 Jul 2021 20:44:50 GMT

HAVE:

/* in yyyy-mm-dd format */

/* date1 is a macro variable within the program */

/* current value of date1 */

date1 = 2017-04-20

NEED:

date1 = '2017-04-20'

ATTEMPT:

/* Tried to put double quotes around it then replace it with single quotes, but this didn't work. */

data _null_;
set date1;
date1= quote(date1);
%put &date1
date1= %sysfunc (translate (&date1,%str(%"),%str(%')));

run;

Can someone tell me the place where I'm going wrong?

Re: How do you add single quotes to a macro variable that's a date?

Astounding — Tue, 06 Jul 2021 20:51:55 GMT

%let date1 = %unquote(%str(%'&date1%'));

Re: How do you add single quotes to a macro variable that's a date?

Reeza — Tue, 06 Jul 2021 20:55:17 GMT

How are you generating that macro variable? That's where you make the change, so is it via SQL, data step?

Re: How do you add single quotes to a macro variable that's a date?

unwanted_banana — Tue, 06 Jul 2021 21:00:34 GMT

It comes from a refined table (getdates) which only has one data value in its column (date1)

proc sql noprint;
select date
into :date1
from getdates;
quit;

Re: How do you add single quotes to a macro variable that's a date?

Reeza — Tue, 06 Jul 2021 21:26:11 GMT

proc sql noprint;
select quote(date, "'") 
into :date1
from getdates;
quit;

Pass it with quotes in the value already then.

@unwanted_banana wrote:

It comes from a refined table (getdates) which only has one data value in its column (date1)

proc sql noprint;
select date
into :date1
from getdates;
quit;

Re: How do you add single quotes to a macro variable that's a date?

Ksharp — Wed, 07 Jul 2021 12:33:07 GMT

%let date1=2017-04-20 ;
%let date2 = %bquote('&date1');

%put &date2. ;