topic Creating numeric variable from current date. in SAS Programming

Creating numeric variable from current date.

G-Scott — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 21:25:57 GMT

Okay, I am sure I am just missing something simple, but I can’t figure it out.

I have a data set where the date is broken down in to three separate variable (month, day, and year), all of which are formatted as Best12.

I am trying to make a macro of the current year and reformat it into best12. for the purpose of exclusion/inclusion.

I know how to use both call symputx and %Let to extract just the year for a macro, but I need to transform it into a numeric with Best12. So when I subset the data I can do it by calling the macro.

I can’t quite figure out how to do that though…any ideas?

Re: Creating numeric variable from current date.

PaigeMiller — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 21:34:19 GMT

@G-Scott wrote:

I have a data set where the date is broken down in to three separate variable (month, day, and year), all of which are formatted as Best12.

I am trying to make a macro of the current year and reformat it into best12. for the purpose of exclusion/inclusion.

I tend to be picky about terminology things like this, but you want a macro variable, and not a macro. These two are not the same.

Macro variables are not formatted, and they are always 100% of the time character. There's no such things as a numeric macro variable, even though it may look numeric to humans.

So you have a year variable in a SAS data set, to make it into a macro variable this is how you do it in a DATA step in SAS:

call symputx('year',year);

No formatting is needed. After the DATA step ends, if you execute this command, you will see that macro variable &year has the proper value.

%put &=year;

I need to transform it into a numeric with Best12. So when I subset the data I can do it by calling the macro.

You can just use &year without any formatting at all. When you subset the data, you are performing a logical (Boolean) operation, something like this DATA step command:

if year < &year;

and these logical (Boolean) operations (and also arithmetic operations) are ALWAYS (that's 100% of the time, ALWAYS) performed by SAS on the un-formatted values. So not only does it not matter what the format is, but SAS does not use the format in such cases.

Re: Creating numeric variable from current date.

Kurt_Bremser — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 21:32:56 GMT

Macro variables are not numeric; the macro language works with text only, and this text is inserted wherever the macro variable is used in code.

So this works:

%let curr_year = 2022;

data want;
set have;
where year = &curr_year.;
run;

Re: Creating numeric variable from current date.

G-Scott — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 18:08:44 GMT

I appreciate you outlining some of the terminology. That is actually helpful.