topic Interval in minutes between datetimes in SAS Programming

Interval in minutes between datetimes

pink_poodle — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 03:32:46 GMT

Why is SAS doing this? It is obviously wrong:

t = intck('min', date1, date2);

date1 is 18feb2023 12:59

date2 is 18feb 2023 13:20

The interval should be 21 minutes, but I am getting -699 minutes.

I understand it is confused by the military time, but what is the explanation and how to work around this?

Any thoughts are welcome!

Re: Interval in minutes between datetimes

Tom — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 03:41:23 GMT

Check the actual values of DATE1 and DATE2. The values you showed are 21 minutes apart.

data test;
  date1 ='18feb2023 12:59'dt;
  date2 ='18feb2023 13:20'dt;
  diff1 = intck('min',date1,date2);
  diff2 = intck('min',date1,date2,'c');
  diff3 = (date2-date1)/60;
  format date1 date2 datetime19.;
run;
proc print;
run;

Obs                  date1                  date2    diff1    diff2    diff3

 1      18FEB2023:12:59:00     18FEB2023:13:20:00      21       21       21

To get -699 minutes you would have had to mistakenly coded the second date as 1:20 AM instead of 1:20 PM.

data test;
  date1 ='18feb2023 12:59'dt;
  date2 ='18feb2023 13:20'dt;
  date3 = date1 - 699*60;
  diff1 = intck('min',date1,date2);
  diff2 = intck('min',date1,date2,'c');
  diff3 = (date2-date1)/60;
  format date1-date3 datetime19.;
run;

Re: Interval in minutes between datetimes

pink_poodle — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 21:07:19 GMT

Yes, this is exactly what happened, thank you!