topic date format cheat sheet? in SAS Procedures

date format cheat sheet?

mnew — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 16:34:45 GMT

Greetings:
New user here. Tired of looking up which date format to use from several sources. Does anyone know a good list of commonly used date format so I can just print out a cheatsheet? It is fun to dig for them but don't always have the time.
Thanks

Re: date format cheat sheet?

Cynthia_sas — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 18:09:17 GMT

Hi:
I'm a big fan of the documentation topic "Formats by Category"
http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lrdict/63026/HTML/default/viewer.htm#/documentation/cdl/en/lrdict/63026/HTML/default/a001263753.htm

cynthia

Re: date format cheat sheet?

mnew — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 19:35:30 GMT

Thank you. I will start from here and add some examples of formatted values.

Re: date format cheat sheet?

Peter_C — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 14:08:13 GMT

I like to refer to the "informat hunter" http://listserv.uga.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0705B&L=sas-l&P=58404 (which I posted to SAS-L a few years ago).
It is just SAS9 data step code trialling all available formats to demonstrate how a sample of your value could be read. Easy exercise to adapt to demonstrate formats instead of informats.
Rather than loop through your data, the "format hunter" loops through sashelp.vformat.
The PUT() function must have its format hard-coded at compile-time, but the putN(), and inputN() fumctions allow the format to be defined at run-time, so we can get SAS to replace the cheat-sheet at http://www.sascommunity.org/wiki/TS_486_Functions,_Informats,_and_Formats with a fully complete review of every single format/informat available in your session (including user-defined formats and informats). Vformat even provides the min and max widths valid for each format (except for user formats 😞 but ) It is a great resource

peterC

Re: date format cheat sheet?

mnew — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 21:02:51 GMT

Thanks but not just for answering my specific question. I checked out the two resources you mentioned: http://www.sascommunity.org and the SAS-L....I've heard of them before yet never expected them to be useful for the very beginners. So much to learn from everywhere!

Re: date format cheat sheet?

bschuemann — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 18:24:40 GMT

Did you ever find a cheat sheet of several most used dates and such? The list of all formats is a bit cumbersome.