Character variable to character date variable

[bharath86]

Hi,

Below is an example of the data I have.

Both A and B must be character types. 

I just want to assign a date format to column A so that I get output as column B. 

how can I do this efficiently without any warnings? Please advise. 

A	B
20150107	2015/01/07
20150207	2015/02/07
2015	2015

[Tom · Accepted solution]

Is this what you want?

If the string in A can be interpretted as YYYYMMDD then make B have the same date printed with slash delimiters.  Otherwise just copy A to B.

data want;
  set have;
  date = input(a,??yymmdd8.);
  if not missing(date) then b=put(date,yymmdds10.);
  else b=a;
  drop date;
run;

[bharath86]

Thank you sir.