calculating earliest among a group of dates

[deleted_user]

Hi All,

In a sas dataset, I have 4 different dates (as 4 columns), need to find the earliest date among those per observation.
Is there any better way to handle this (apart from recursive multiple if then else statements).Thanks.

Kumar.

[Jay]

Dates are numbers, so use the min function in a data step.....

data a;
set b;
min_date=min(of date1-date4);
format min_date date8.;
run;