Character to Numberic

[lisa2002]

SAS Team, 

Good morning and happy Friday.  I have a data set with dates that I want to change from character to numeric.  I need some assistance since my code CREATED=input(Created_On,8.); changed character to numeric but did NOT transfer my date 9/17/2018.  What am I missing from my code that is hindering my dates from transfering to my new column accordingly?

data work.PA_POC;

set POC_1."FORM RESPONSE"n;
/*place Created_On as numeric*/
CREATED=input(Created_On,8.);
/*******why isn't the dates moving to the new column *****************************/
run;

created_on                   created

9/17/18                                   .

9/20/18                                   .

1/1/19                                     .

[PaigeMiller]

There is no such thing as a numeric equivalent of the text string '9/17/18'. SAS does not know (and I do not know) how to turn this exact text string into a number, because it is not a number.

Now perhaps you wanted the text string '9/17/18' to be interpreted as the date September 17, 2018. Then you could use something like this code with a date/time informat to cause SAS to interpret the string as a date or datetime as appropriate.

data test;
    y='9/17/18';
	num_var=input(y,anydtdte.);
	format num_var date9.;
run;

[lisa2002]

Thank you for explaining this to me. The code definitely worked.

[koyelghosh]

@lisa2002 If the solution worked for you, then please mark the post by @PaigeMiller as a solution. It might be helpful to others searching for similar problems.

[lisa2002]

when placing  y='9/17/18'; how will it work if I multiple dates in the same row? 

[PaigeMiller]

You just need to change the original code you wrote to use the ANYDTDTE informat in the INPUT function.

[Tom]

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@lisa2002 wrote:

when placing  y='9/17/18'; how will it work if I multiple dates in the same row? 

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Multiple dates where?  Are you saying your character strings has multiple date values?  Or that you have multiple character variables that each contain one date string?