Case statement with Dates

[Jyuen204]

I have a table of records with a Start Date and an Entered Date (SOENTD). I have the below case statement to populate a field based on the the START_DT values or lacktherof. Problem is that the Nul Start Dates are not being registered and are defaulting to 'Existing' when they should be 'N/A'

Do I need to use Coalesce in this to do what I need it to? Any help is appreciated. Thank You!

proc sql;

update TBL_EX

set DATA_IND = case when START_DT >= SOENTD then 'New'

                                    when START_DT < SOENTD then 'Existing'

                                     when START_DT is null then 'N/A'

                             end;

quit;

[PaigeMiller · Accepted solution]

case when START_DT >= SOENTD then 'New'
when START_DT < SOENTD and not missing(start_dt) then 'Existing'
when START_DT is null then 'N/A'
end

Missing values are considered to be less than non-missing values, that's why your original code doesn't work. It has nothing to do with the fact that the variables contain date values.

[Reeza]

Move your NULL condition to the start since SAS considers missing values as the lowest numeric value.