Calculating the duration of time between two columns

[justine05]

Hi,

I am new to SAS programming in SAS EG.

I am trying to add a duration column which calculates the duration between two time columns.

I am currently using the following:

data duration;
set mydata_table;
DURATION=end_time-start_time;
run;

These are the type of results I get

row  |  start_time  |  end_time  |  duration
1      |  11:05:19      |  12:00:43   |  3324
2      |  12:00:43     |  4:19:25      |  -27678

I would like the output of duration to be in seconds for all rows in the data set

and where the time goes into the following day as per row 2, I would like it to calculate the actual duration from one day to the next rather than displaying in a negative value.

Hope you can help.

[SASKiwi]

If you wish to have date differences as well then you need to add dates to your input data, either as separate date variables or you could combine them with your time variables as datetimes.There is no way of telling from your row 2 if the end time is for the next day, next week, or next month.

[justine05 · Accepted solution]

Hi There,

I managed to use the following code which gave me the outcome I was after.

My data set consisted of a start_date column, a start_time column, and an end_time column. 

data mydata_set_2;

        set mydata_set;        

              drop start_date enddate end_time start_time;

              START_DT=dhms(eventdate,0,0,modestart;

                       format START_DT datetime.;

       if end_time<start_time then enddate=eventdate+1;

              else enddate=eventdate;

                      format enddate date9.;

                      END_DT=dhms(enddate,0,0,modeend);

                      format END_DT datetime.;

                      DURATION=END_DT-START_DT;

run;