Autoincremented numeric variable throughout months

[Mick_lb]

Hello everyone,

I want to increment a value from the number 13.

In my case, the number 13 means "September2017".

I want to increment this number by 1 for each additional month (14 for October2017, 15 for November2017, 16 for December2017, 17 for January2018 and so on...).

For example, if I want the number 14, I tried the following code :

%let Initial_Month='01SEP2017'd; /*Fixed value*/
%let Day=%sysfunc(intnx(month, %sysfunc(today()), -1), DATE9.);
%let Actual_Month= 13 + %sysfunc(intck('month', &Initial_Month. , &Day.));

But I got the following error :

ERROR: Argument 3 to function INTCK referenced by the %SYSFUNC or %QSYSFUNC macro function is not a number.
ERROR: Invalid arguments detected in %SYSCALL, %SYSFUNC, or %QSYSFUNC argument list. Execution of %SYSCALL statement or %SYSFUNC
or %QSYSFUNC function reference is terminated.

I'm also opened to solutions using Data steps, the point is just to get a macro variable with an autoincremental value 14.

Thank you in advance for your help !

Best regards,

[PaigeMiller]

A common mistake is that you have formatted a macro variable into a human-readable date. DO NOT FORMAT MACRO VARIABLE VALUES into human-readable values (unless you are using these dates in titles or labels).

%let Initial_Month='01SEP2017'd; 
%let Day=%sysfunc(intnx(month, %sysfunc(today()),-1)); /* I removed the format here */
%let Actual_Month= %eval(13 + %sysfunc(intck(month, &Initial_Month. , &Day.))); 
%put &=actual_month;

This works because now DAY is an integer representing the number of days since Jan 1 1960; which is how SAS needs to have date values represented. Since I ran this on 12/12/19, the value of &DAY is 21854. This works properly in INTCK. If &DAY is 01NOV2019 (as you would have in your original code), this is not a valid third argument of INTCK.