topic Re: formatting numeric to date in SAS Programming

formatting numeric to date

Haritha1 — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 10:07:38 GMT

Hi,

I'm working on a data which has numeric variable in the follwing way.

01.2015

04.2015

06.2015

09.2015

I tried converting it in to date format by using following code.

format variable yymmn6.;

I'm getting following output.

196001

can any one please tell me the reason for the above output and how do I rectify the probem.

Thanks alot in advance.

Re: formatting numeric to date

RW9 — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 10:23:30 GMT

Hi,

To get a good answer it is recommended to post test data, in the form of a datastep (so we don't guess what you have), post output you want, and show code/logs of what does not work.

I am guesssing 01.2015 is a character variable and means Jan 2015? If so then you need to input it as a date, give it a default say 01, and then format it to what you want (SAS dates are all numeric, number of days since a certain timepoint):

data want;
  my="01.2015";
  full_date=input(cats('01.',my),ddmmyy10.);
  format full_date yymmn6.;
run;

Re: formatting numeric to date

Haritha1 — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 10:32:07 GMT

Hi RW9,

I'm working in a VDI, so couldn't post the data and log information.

Thanks for your reply.

I did the same and it worked.

Is there a way to do it with out concatenating 01?

Thanks.

Re: formatting numeric to date

RW9 — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 10:41:54 GMT

I don't know what a VDI is, but do bear in mind for future posts that this information helps us understand things at your end which we can't see.

No, SAS dates have to be complete dates with Day Month and Year as they are stored as a number of days from a set date. The format applied to this number can show the data slightly differently, but cannot alter the underlying data.

01JAN2015 = 20089 days <the number 20089 is what is stored in the variable.

If you just want to display first part after second, then a cat and scan can do it (though always recommended to store dates as numeric dates, it just makes life easier):

data want;
  my="01.2015";
  ym=cats(scan(my,2,"."),scan(my,1,"."));
run;

That is string manipulation.