topic Re: How do I create a new date-variable? in SAS Programming

How do I create a new date-variable?

Gothardt — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 10:03:21 GMT

Dear all SAS-users,

I have this:

Obs Month Year

1 2 2011

2 3 2011

3 5 2011

4 6 2012

5 6 2012

6 7 2012

7 7 2012

8 8 2013

How do I create a new variable that looks like this:

Date

2/2011

3/2011

5/2011

6/2012

7/2012

8/2013

Re: How do I create a new date-variable?

naveenraj — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 10:08:55 GMT

Date=catx("/", of Month Year);

Re: How do I create a new date-variable?

Gothardt — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 10:14:50 GMT

Thanks a lot @naveenraj. Do you also now how I change the format ddmmyy10. (eg. 01/02/2011) to this mm/year (02/2011)?

Re: How do I create a new date-variable?

RW9 — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 10:25:23 GMT

Well, @naveenraj's solution creates a character variable. Unless that is really the only use for the variable, then it is probably not an ideal solution. So you have a year, and a month, so the next thing to do is decide on a rule for day - as date variables need to be complete. Lets take an example of setting 01 as day for each:

new_date=mdy(month,1,year);

This will create a numeic variable which contains the number of days since a specific date (some 50 od years ogo), which is how SAS stores dates. You can then apply one of the many formats to this number to a see a date value:

format new_date date9.;

Will display as 01JAN2015.

It is always a good idea to store dates/times as numerics and apply formats, as this allows the use of all functions, and maths on them, and allows you to simply change the format it displays in.

Re: How do I create a new date-variable?

Reeza — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 11:24:11 GMT

You need a date variable, not a character, otherwise you can't do calculations based on date or change how it's displayed.

The code below should help:

Date_var = mdy(month, day, year);

Format date_var ddmmyy10.;