topic converting string date to date format yyyy-mm-dd in SAS Enterprise Guide

converting string date to date format yyyy-mm-dd

alepage — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 16:14:44 GMT

Hello,

Here,s my data

creationdate creationtime filesize
2024-09-11 14:41:09 112252063
2024-10-31 15:59:49 109152507
2024-10-31 15:59:49 556
2024-11-15 10:14:06 111706769
2025-01-07 10:02:14 112484453
2025-01-28 14:26:40 112503907
2025-05-01 15:15:33 1934

data foldercontents2;
set foldercontents2;
crdate = input(trim(creationdate), mmddyy10.);
format crdate yymmdd10.;
run;

crdate is empty

Re: converting string date to date format yyyy-mm-dd

Cynthia_sas — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 16:46:34 GMT

Hi:
The INFORMAT you use in your INPUT. statement MUST match what is contained in the character value you want to convert to numeric. You are making the new numeric variable CRDATE by using the INPUT function to turn the string '2024-11-15', etc, into a numeric value representing a SAS date value. You told the INPUT function that CREATIONDATE should be transformed using the INFORMAT mmddyy10. I'm not entirely sure you need TRIM, depending on whether the original variable has trailing spaces. However, your CREATIONDATE character string looks like it is YYYY-MM-DD on all the rows you gave as an example. So I think you need this:
crdate = input(trim(creationdate), yymmdd10.);

Cynthia

Re: converting string date to date format yyyy-mm-dd

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 16:50:08 GMT

Why do you use an informat with MDY order when the date strings are in YMD order?

The correct informat should be YYMMDD10.