Concatenating Date and Time

[brulard]

Hello,

I want to create a new value datetime derived from existing values. Existing values are formatted as follows: Date, date9. (24MAY2016) and Time, time8. (9:10:07)

Result I am looking get may be as follows: 24MAY2016:09:10:07. What is important is that I am able to compare this column datetime against itself, using < > functions.

I found the following code online, but it is giving me errors:

Data want; 
attrib newdate format=datetime25.;
set have ;
newdate=input(put(date,date9.)||put(time,time8.),datetime.);run;

Here is the sas error message I receive: “Invalid argument to function INPUT at line 190 column 9.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks

[RW9 · Accepted solution]

You have a typo in the string, the | should read ||.

data want; 
  attrib newdate format=datetime25.;
  date="01jan2016"d;
  time=input("9:10:07",time8.);
  newdate=input(catx("T",put(date,date9.),put(time,time8.)),datetime.);
  if datepart(newdate)=date then chk1=1;
  if timepart(newdate)=time then chk2=1;
run;

The above code shows what you want.

[brulard]

thanks for the quick help RW9

[ballardw]

The easiest way to get a datetime from a date and a time valued variable I believe to be:

datetime = dhms(date, 0,0,time);

[brulard]

hey Ballardw... thanks for this suggestion... very simple and works great!