topic Datetime Field DHMS weird behavior in SAS Procedures

Datetime Field DHMS weird behavior

hellind — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 06:43:51 GMT

SAS 9.2

I have a date field appointment_date and it shows '10Jan2014'. It is a date field and not text field.

And then I run this SAS code:

data NCA_OAOS3x;

set NCA_OAOS3 (where=(oaos_case_no='S140106-5'));

appt_date_timex=dhms(appointment_date,12,0,0);

format appt_date_timex datetime.;

run;

It returns 11JAN14:02:00:00

And if I run this SAS code:

data NCA_OAOS3x;

set NCA_OAOS3 (where=(oaos_case_no='S140106-5'));

appt_date_timex=dhms(appointment_date,0,0,0);

format appt_date_timex datetime.;

run;

It returns 10JAN14:14:00:00

Can anyone explain why the hour component is not returning as expected? There seems to be hour component in the date field. Date field is actually '10Jan14:14:00:00'

Re: Datetime Field DHMS weird behavior

ballardw — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 15:44:29 GMT

Provide a numeric, not date formatted value of your variable.
You might get this behavior if there are some decimals floating around.

If this:

appt_date_timex=dhms(floor(appointment_date),12,0,0);

fixes the problem that was the likely cause.

Re: Datetime Field DHMS weird behavior

hellind — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 11:15:23 GMT

ballardw,

Thanks, it worked using floor. But why would there be a decimal in a date statement? Anyway it worked.

Re: Datetime Field DHMS weird behavior

ballardw — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 16:32:05 GMT

I would go back in your processes. Somebody may have converted hours to fraction of a day for another purpose. OR used a year to days conversion multiplying by 356.25 somewhere.

Re: Datetime Field DHMS weird behavior

hellind — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 03:19:06 GMT

I imported the data from an excel file. And in excel I can see 10-Jan-2014 in formatted. The underlying in excel could be having decimal.

Lesson learnt: It is always safe to floor the date field then. Among a dataset of 10,000 rows, only a few of them had decimal and I was not aware of it unless my user feedback to me.

I thought the whole point of a date field is not to have any time component.