Changing date column from CHAR to NUM

[JibJam221]

Hi everyone, 

I am having issues changing my DATE column from a CHAR to a NUM so that I can do a join with another table. 

The code runs, however when I check the properties, the "accurate_episode_date"'s property is still CHAR. 

Here is the code:

data main2; set covid.covid;

format test_date mmddyy10.;

test_date = input(Accurate_Episode_Date,date9.);

run;

Thanks

[ballardw]

1) you can't change the type of an existing variable

2) you created a new variable test_date that should be numeric and display in the Date9. format. That is the one to look at as your code did not even attempt to change Accurate_Episode_Date.

[JibJam221]

Sorry I meant to say that test_date didnt change to a NUM variable. Any suggestions on how to make test_date a NUM var?

[Reeza]

The format in the INPUT needs to match how the variable currently looks. Since you've said DATE9 that means that your variable looks like 31OCT2021 right now?

[Tom]

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@JibJam221 wrote:
Sorry I meant to say that test_date didnt change to a NUM variable. Any suggestions on how to make test_date a NUM var?

---

You cannot change the type of an existing variable. So if TEST_DATE already appeared as a character variable in your source dataset then just trying to attach a numeric format to it or assign a numeric value to it would not change how it was already defined.

Check that TEST_DATE does not already exist on COVID.COVID.  If it does then you can use DROP= or RENAME= dataset option to get it out of the way so you can use TEST_DATE as the name of your NEW variable.

data main2; 
  set covid.covid (drop=test_date);
  format test_date mmddyy10.;
  test_date = input(Accurate_Episode_Date,date9.);
run;

[Kurt_Bremser]

Please post the complete log of that step.