topic Re: Character Date Convert to date code not working in SAS Programming

Character Date Convert to date code not working

DataNerd13 — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 18:43:40 GMT

I've scoured the boards and none of the solutions are working for this code block.

I have a variable with character dates ($8 according to proc contents) in a format of YYYYMMDD but the code below isn't working to convert and the error is the "ERROR 48-59: The informat YYYYMMDD was not found or could not be loaded." I've even tried proc sql and it fails as well.

I'm trying to create a new date variable so I can move on to get week number:

data want; set have;
proper_dt = input(char_date,YYYYMMDD8.);
format proper_dt date9.;
run;

Thanks for any help!

Re: Character Date Convert to date code not working

Reeza — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 18:51:42 GMT

Show your actual code & log please and a small screenshot of your input data, have, please.
~~Code looks correct so the error is somewhere else.~~
Format is YY (only 2 Y), so YYMMDD not YYYY

Re: Character Date Convert to date code not working

SASKiwi — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 18:51:27 GMT

The correct format name is YYMMDD. You can easily check format names by looking in the SAS documentation: documentation.sas.com

Re: Character Date Convert to date code not working

DataNerd13 — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 19:01:57 GMT

I was assuming the format was the one I had as a character which is why I had 4 Y's. Thank you! This worked.

Signed,

Only a little embarrassed 🙂

Re: Character Date Convert to date code not working

Reeza — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 20:20:06 GMT

I missed it on my first scan and been doing this for almost two decades....