topic Easy : How to compare date field to fixed date in SAS Enterprise Guide

Easy : How to compare date field to fixed date

PadraigODea — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:32:57 GMT

This is easy but I am struggling with it.

Field t1.TrnDt is a date but the following syntax gives an error. I am try to create a new computed column. What's wrong with this?

CASE WHEN t1.TrnDt > "01/01/2011" THEN "Late" ELSE "Early" END

Re: Easy : How to compare date field to fixed date

ballardw — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:39:53 GMT

SAS requires literal dates in the form of ddMONyy or ddMONyyyy, in quotes and followed by D to indicate date

CASE WHEN t1.TrnDt > '01Jan2011'd ....

You can use '1Jan2011'd but I generally use the 01Jan so I know I didn't actually mean 10Jan and just missed a digit.

There are similar rules for Time or DATETIME literals.

Re: Easy : How to compare date field to fixed date

PadraigODea — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:42:25 GMT

Easy when you know how !! Thanks again.

Re: Easy : How to compare date field to fixed date

PadraigODea — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 17:04:40 GMT

Aaagh! I spoke too soon.

The following date (cut and pasted from SAS)

t1.TrnDt = 12JUN2007:00:00:00.000

The above date gives an "After" result to the following calculated field;

CASE WHEN t1.TrnDt >= '01Jan2011'd THEN "After" ELSE "Before" END

But surely 2007 is BEFORE 2011 ??? Why does my case statement fail??

Re: Easy : How to compare date field to fixed date

ballardw — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 17:10:04 GMT

The value 12JUN2007:00:00:00.000 is a DATETIME value. SAS datetimes are counts of seconds and SAS dates are counts of days.

So either use something like "12JUN2007:00:00:00"DT OR compare the datetpart of the value to literal, which would probably be your intention:

CASE WHEN datepart(t1.TrnDt) >= '01Jan2011'd

one of my pet peeves are programmers that call datetime values dates or follow what seems to be a Microslop approach of defaulting things to datetime when you actually want dates.

Re: Easy : How to compare date field to fixed date

PadraigODea — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 17:12:35 GMT

Thanks - That's it. Much appreciated.