Convert character/string to date9.

[amylanza]

Hello, 

Somehow my dates were input into my dataset wrong and I need to change them.

I have the dates as a string right now and they are in yyq6. format but in characters. So the current dates show 2017Q1, 2017Q2, etc. but are char$6 as a string.

What I want is to see 01JAN2017 for the string 2017Q1, 01APR2017 for the string 2017Q2 and so on. But not just a string of that - it needs to be a proper date format.

I feel like I have tried everything and at best it will error out and at worst it will set all of values for that variable to missing.

How can I do this??

Thank you for your help!!

[Kurt_Bremser]

Use the YYQ informat:

numvar = input(charvar,yyq6.);
format numvar date9.;