topic Re: Date formats in SAS Programming

Date formats

india2016 — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 13:35:00 GMT

03JAN2011:00:00:00.000

which format should I use to read this date ?

Re: Date formats

art297 — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 14:06:48 GMT

Depends upon what you want. That is a datetime, not a date. If you want to capture all three you could use something like:

data have;
  input dt datetime22.;
  format date date9.;
  format time time5.;
  date=datepart(dt);
  time=timepart(dt);
  cards;
03JAN2011:00:00:00.000
;

Art, CEO, AnalystFinder.com

Re: Date formats

ChrisBrooks — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 14:08:44 GMT

You need an informat to read data not a format - try datetime22. (Untested)

Re: Date formats

ballardw — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 14:27:26 GMT

If all of the values have the same "time", especially of :00:00:00.000 I would use a DATE9. informat to read the date and discard the time part.

Don't forget to set a display format so humans can see the date in a useable form.

Re: Date formats

Reeza — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 14:40:51 GMT

When in doubt try ANYDTDTM for datetime and ANYDTDTE for dates.

Re: Date formats

ChrisBrooks — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 15:49:41 GMT

The only note of caution I'd sound about ANYDTDTM and ANYDTDTE is that they are dependant on the correct Locale being set. I learned that the hard way a few years ago when working on a server in the U.K. where unknown to me the Locale had been set to US which led to some correct dates, some incorrect dates and some errors. It puzzled me for quite a while before I realised what was going on.....

Re: Date formats

india2016 — Thu, 31 Aug 2017 18:38:30 GMT

Thanks, everyone

I used Datetime22.3 format and it successfully reads that observation.