Change date format

[Ujjawal]

Hi Team,

I have dates stored in character format. They look like - "15Jul2014". I need to convert it into 2014-Jul-15 i.e. YYYY-MMM-DD . Is there any easy way to convert it?

Thanks in anticipation!

[skillman]

What software are you using? Base SAS, Enterprise Guide, SAS Data Management, SAS Data Integration, etc.?

-shawn

[Ujjawal]

I am using Base SAS. Does your answer vary in Base SAS and SAS Enterprise Guide? Thanks!

[Ksharp]

You need to define a format for yourself .

Code: Program

proc format;
picture fmt
 low-high='%Y-%b-%0d'(datatype=date);
run;
data x;
 a='15Jul2014'd;
 format a fmt12.
run;

Xia Keshan

[RW9]

Hi,

Alternatively just create a text field:

data want;

     set have;

     length new_date $10;

     new_date=catx('-',substr(old_date,6,4),substr(old_date,3,3),substr(old_date,1,2));

run;

[cov_derek]

Ujjawal,

Is your date really a character variable? If so, I would urge you to convert it into a SAS date value first.

If your date is stored as a SAS date value, RW9's solution won't work without additional coding. If it is a character value, then you won't be able to do any calulations with it without code to do that transformation to a SAS date value. Xia's solution is the easiest way of dealing with the fact that SAS does not have every possible date format available. Only change I would make is I would use a more descriptive format name than "fmt".

IMHO, there is no reason to represent a date as a character variable in a SAS table or view, UNLESS you are dealing with complex ISO8601 dates and need to calculate ISO durations and intervals using CALL IS8601_CONVERT.

Derek