topic Re: Substring Question in SAS Programming

Substring Question

Ody — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 15:11:05 GMT

Hello all,

I'm encountering an irritating problem I was hoping to get some input on.

We have a global dates macro in our environment that I'm using to get a list of date variables. I'm using this for another program I'm writing.

The date I'm given from our gloal macro is formatted 'MM/DD/YYYY'. The variable &pdeg resolves to '09/23/2015'. I want to rearrange the date so that it's YYYYMMDD.

Here is my code:

%let date = %sysfunc(
cat(
%qsubstr(&pdeg,8,4),
%qsubstr(&pdeg,2,2),
%qsubstr(&pdeg,5,2)
)
);

The problem with this is that it's giving me the result of 2015923. I'm losing the 0. It's driving me crazy. I know there is a simple solution here but it's evading me. Appreciate any assistance!

Re: Substring Question

ballardw — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 15:18:38 GMT

Try

%let pdeg=09/23/2015;
%let date = %sysfunc(putn(%sysfunc(inputn(&pdeg,mmddyy10.)),yymmddn8.));
%put &date;

Re: Substring Question

Astounding — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 15:27:33 GMT

Why complicate things by adding the CAT function? %let date = %substr(&pdeg,8,4)/%substr(&pdeg,2,2)/%substr(&pdeg,5,2);

Re: Substring Question

Ody — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 15:36:54 GMT

You know, upon further reflection I suppose there is no harm in leaving it numeric. I had to modify your statement slightly:

%let date = %sysfunc(inputn(%qsubstr(&pdeg,2,10), mmddyy10.), yymmddn8.);

Thanks!

Re: Substring Question

ballardw — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 16:39:47 GMT

If your PDEG variable was built from something else It might be even easier to use that instead of a string.