topic Re: Global macro to format dates in SAS Procedures

Global macro to format dates

omega1983 — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 17:22:09 GMT

I imported a spreadsheet into sas. I ran some queries against the import and it is ready for distribution. The dates are in date9 format. Is there a global macro that I can plug in to do an auto change to mmddyy10.

I could export it, then import again and define the dates, however there are about 30 columns with dates.

Re: Global macro to format dates

Tom — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 17:35:30 GMT

To change the way that a variable is displayed you just need to use a FORMAT statement.

In your case it would be in the form:

FORMAT var1 var2 ..... MMDDYY10. ;

If you add it to a data step then the formats are permanently attached, or you could just use it in the report step where you want to use a different display format.

You can automate the generation of the list of variable names by querying the metadata.

proc sql noprint;

select name into :datevars separated by ' '

from dictionary.columns

where libname='MYLIB' and memname='MYDATA'

and format = 'DATE'

;

quit;

...

format &datevars MMDDYY10. ;

...

Re: Global macro to format dates

Reeza — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 17:35:50 GMT

Note that the comparisons in the where clause are case sensitive.

proc sql;

select var_date into :var_dates separated by " "

from sashelp.vtable

where libname="SASHELP" and memname="STOCKS" and format="DATE9." ;

quit;

data want;

set have;

format &var_dates mmddyy10.;

run;