topic Datetimes format in SAS Programming

Datetimes format

SASdevAnneMarie — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 11:36:28 GMT

Hello Experts,

I would like to display my data as 2025100513 (yyyymmddtt). My code seems do not work and I can not find the right format here : SAS Help Center: Working with Dates and Times By Using the ISO 8601 Basic and Extended Notations.

I have this error message : ERROR: Format name B8601DT10.0 not found or the width and/or decimal specified for the format used are out of range. Thank you for your help.

This my code :

%let Ma_Date=%sysfunc(compress(%sysfunc(datetime(),B8601DT10.0),T));

Re: Datetimes format

PaigeMiller — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 16:00:16 GMT

@SASdevAnneMarie wrote:

Hello Experts,

I would like to display my data as 2025100513 (yyyymmddtt). My code seems do not work and I can not find the right format here : SAS Help Center: Working with Dates and Times By Using the ISO 8601 Basic and Extended Notations.

I have this error message : ERROR: Format name B8601DT10.0 not found or the width and/or decimal specified for the format used are out of range. Thank you for your help.

This my code :
%let Ma_Date=%sysfunc(compress(%sysfunc(datetime(),B8601DT10.0),T));

It is telling you that the format you have chosen is not wide enough. B8501DT must have a width of between 15 and 26. So this works:

%let Ma_Date=%sysfunc(putn(%sysfunc(datetime()),B8601DT15.0));
%put &=ma_date;

If you don't want the minutes and seconds in the output, you can use the %substr function to chop off the last 4 unwanted digits.

Re: Datetimes format

Kurt_Bremser — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 16:00:06 GMT

Maxim 1: Read the Documentation.

B8601DTw.d Format :

w

specifies the width of the output field.

Default	19
Range	15–26

So you can't use this format with a length of 10.

Roll your own custom format with PROC FORMAT:

proc format;
picture ymdh 
  low-high = '%Y%0m%0d%0H' (datatype=datetime)
;
run;

data _null_;
x = datetime();
put x= ymdh10.;
run;

Re: Datetimes format

SASdevAnneMarie — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 16:27:56 GMT

Thank you !