Converting 01JAN2008 (format: Date9.) to Year (2008)

[Jack_Smitherson]

Hi everyone, 

I want to convert a date variable with the following formatting 01JAN2008 (the format is Date9.)  to a date variable of year only (i.e. 2008). 

Could you please provide some guidance on the syntax to do that? 

Thanks in advance! 

[stat_sas]

Hi,

Something like this?

data have;
d = '01JAN2008'd;
format d date9.;
year=year(d);
run;

[Reeza]

You have a few options. 

1. Convert it to a numerical variable, which is basically the year function

myDate = '01Jan2008'd;

myYear = year(myDate);

2. You can use a format instead to change the appearance. PROC MEANS/FREQ/SUMMARY will respect the format, PROC SQL will not. This changes how the variable is display but not the underlying data.

format myDate year4.;

3. You can do a combination of 1/2, supposing you wanted it as year but in a different variable.

myYear = myDate;
format myYear year4.;

[Jack_Smitherson]

Thank you for your response. I do want to run some proc sql later on, so simply formatting the variable is not the most optimal option.

In the first option you gave me "Convert it to a numerical variable, which is basically the year function" - how can I go about applying that to 12 months (i.e. 01Jan2000, 1Feb2000, 01Mar2000, etc.) with five years worth of data? (i.e. 2000-2004; I have a combination of 01Jan2000, 01Jan2001, 01Jan2002, etc.). 

Thanks again! 

[Reeza]

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@Jack_Smitherson wrote:

Thank you for your response. I do want to run some proc sql later on, so simply formatting the variable is not the most optimal option.

In the first option you gave me "Convert it to a numerical variable, which is basically the year function" - how can I go about applying that to 12 months (i.e. 01Jan2000, 1Feb2000, 01Mar2000, etc.) with five years worth of data? (i.e. 2000-2004; I have a combination of 01Jan2000, 01Jan2001, 01Jan2002, etc.). 

Thanks again! 

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That depends on your data structure.  

Use the YEAR() function on the variable to obtain the YEAR.