Convert text dates and see if two dates are the same

[Bellefeuille]

Good Evening,

im reading in an input file that has dates in text format.

IDAT $ EDAT $ TRDAT $

Idat and TRDat

Both look similar to

Idate	trdate
20170426	20170426

my goal is to compare if the date are identical or not.(1 or 0)

[Reeza]

You don't have to convert the to dates to check if they're equal if they look the same. You can check directly. 

I would suggest using an INFORMAT to specify the format type - yymmdd8 and then format the date with a date9 format.

Here's some skeleton code:

data have;
informat idat edat trtdat yymmdd8.;
format idat edat trtdat date9.;
input idat edit trtdat;

if idat = trtdat then do;

****whateever you want to do here*****;

end;


run;

[RW9]

You have two text strings therefore:

identical=ifc(strip(edat)=strip(trtdat),1,0);