DATE ERROR IN IF STATEMENT

[archita]

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I am merging two datsets by week starting from 2020106 and ending 20201023. how do i use it in if statement?

data combined;

merge a(in=in1) b(in=in2);

by week_date;

if in1 and in2 and week_date >=20201016 and week_date <20201023;

run;

[Tom]

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@archita wrote:

/

I am merging two datsets by week starting from 2020106 and ending 20201023. how do i use it in if statement?

data combined;

merge a(in=in1) b(in=in2);

by week_date;

if in1 and in2 and week_date >=20201016 and week_date <20201023;

run;

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Did you get an error? If so what?  Or did it not work? If so how do you know?

How is the variable WEEK_DATE defined in each of those two datasets?  Your code is assuming it is a number with values like 20,201,016.  I human might think a number like that could mean the 16th of November of the year 2020.

But if your variable is character then values need quotes.  Such as '20201016'.

And if the variable has date values (you can tell because it will have a date type format attached to, such as the YYMMDDN8. format that would make the values look like the numbers you typed in your code.  In that case you need to use date literals that have values that the DATE informat can interpret.  Such as '16NOV2020'd.

[archita]

Thank you all

[andreas_lds]

All depends on how the dates are stored in your datasets. If they are not sas-dates, but strings or just numbers, fix that problem before you continue with merging.

[Kurt_Bremser]

If that code does not throw an ERROR or a WARNING, but returns zero observations, then it is very likely that you have SAS date values in week_date, which are in the 5-digit range for all current dates.

Otherwise, we need to see the log as is for diagnostics. And run a PROC CONTENTS on the dataset and post the result, so we can get an idea about your week_date variable.

[ballardw · Accepted solution]

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@archita wrote:

/

I am merging two datsets by week starting from 2020106 and ending 20201023. how do i use it in if statement?

data combined;

merge a(in=in1) b(in=in2);

by week_date;

if in1 and in2 and week_date >=20201016 and week_date <20201023;

run;

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Number values in the range of 20201016 would be past the year 20,000 and outside the range of currently valid SAS dates.

https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/Working-with-Dates-and-Times-in-SAS-Tutorial/... has a PDF with much information about dates.

[archita]

Thank you