Convert month format to character

[eabc0351]

Hello. I am trying to convert a numeric date variable into a character. Code below. Please advise.

*previous step;
data have1; set have;
gap_months=birthdate-admdate;
format gap_months month.;
run;

*This provided me with the difference in months from the birth hospital visit to
the hospital readmission . Now I want to turn the variable gap_months into a character;


I tried the following, it didn't work - any suggestions? thank you;

data want; set have1;
 gap_monthschar=  put(input( gap_months,best.),z2.);
run;

[novinosrin]

More than the code, a sample data of what you 'have' and what you 'want' will help many understand better plz

[eabc0351]

Yes, sorry about that. I figured it the syntax in the meantime. I was looking for the function month(). This helped me get the month of both dates in a format that I wanted. @novinosrin Thank you for your reply. 

[Kurt_Bremser · Accepted solution]

gap_months is, per definition from the previous step, numeric, so the conversion with the input() function is not necessary.

From your code I infer that birthdate and admdate are SAS dates, and to calculate the month difference between dates, one uses the intck() function:

gap_months = intck('month',birthdate,admdate,'c');

and then

gap_monthschar = put(gap_months,z2.);

both can be done in one step.

[eabc0351]

Great @Kurt_Bremser . That solution worked, thank you.