How to convert string like 2023-10-02 14:44:07 into a datetime format

[alepage]

How to convert string variable startdate like 2023-10-02 14:44:07 into a datetime format

[Astounding]

Does this string represent October 2 or February 10, or do you want SAS to make that choice for you?

[alepage]

october 02

[PaigeMiller · Accepted solution]

assuming the date time strings have consistent formatting

data have;
    dt='2023-10-02 14:44:07';
run;
data want;
    set have;
    dt_num=input(dt,YMDDTTM.);
    format dt_num datetime.;
run;

[Rick_SAS]

if you want to read it directly into a SAS datetime variable, you can avoid reading the data as a string and then creating a second numerical variable. Here's how to read data directly. If you are not familiar with the ANYDTTMw. informat, you can read about the ANY* informats at https://blogs.sas.com/content/iml/2016/11/11/anydtdte-informat-read-any-date-sas.html

data have;
infile datalines dlm=',' dsd truncover; /* comma-separated input */
informat dt anydtdtm.;                  /* read directly into datetime; default width=19 */
format   dt datetime.;                  /* format as datetime, too! */
input dt amount;
datalines;
2020-10-20  4:32:10,  1234.56
2023-10-02 14:44:07, 54321.00
2023-12-31 23:59:59,   876.54
;
proc print; run;